"I hope," says Esther, presently, trusting to the obtuseness of her companion's perceptions not to discover the flagrant hypocrisy of the question--"I hope that Sir Thomas was quite well when you left Felton?" "Quite--thanks." "And Lady Gerard?" "Yes--thanks." "And--and" (bending down her head in the vain endeavour to screen the red blush that the frosty sun, flaming in through the window opposite, makes obtrusively evident)--"and Mr. Gerard?" "He is _very_ well--thanks," replies Miss Blessington, with the conscious smile that had formerly exasperated Esther, and with an emphasis not common with her. Miss Blessington does not usually employ emphasis: it is _mezzoceto_, as is enthusiasm of which it is the exponent. Half an hour later Esther is sitting beside the old squire, as close as possible to his best ear, brandishing the _Times'_ giant squares in her unaccustomed hand. The old squire is a superb wreck. Spiteful Time is fond of removing the landmarks that youth sets upon our faces; is fond of changing great, clear, almond eyes into little damp jellies--sweet moist pursemouths into dry bags of wrinkles; but it is a task beyond even _his_ power to destroy the shape of that grand old bent head--to deface the outlines of that thin-nostriled, patrician nose. "What shall I read first?" asks the young girl, timidly, but enunciating each syllable with painstaking slowness and clearness. "The State of the Funds," replies the old gentleman, promptly, thrusting his hand into his breast, and closing his eyes, in his favourite attitude. Esther has not the most distant idea where the "State of the Funds" lives: she turns the huge sheets topsy-turvy--inside out, outside in--in the vain search for their habitat, making, meanwhile, the most unjustifiable aggressive rustling and crackling, which she presumptuously trusts to his deafness not to hear. "Don't make such an infernal crackling, my dear!" he says presently, with some pettishness. "I thought you could not hear," she unwisely answers, trembling. "God bless my soul, child! The dead would have heard the noise you were making," he rejoins, snappishly. Having at length mastered the fact that the "State of the Funds" comes under the head of "Money Market and City Intelligence," Esther gives the desired information. Then follows a leader: "The position of American politics is at this moment peculiarly perplexing and anomalous; so perplexing that even those English observers who, like ourselves, have given a careful and constant attention to the course of the Transatlantic movement since the first appearance of Secession, can hardly pretend clearly to understand----" "Pretend clearly to _what?_ For God's sake don't gabble so!" "Can--hardly--pretend--clearly--to--understand--the--full--meaning --of--the--situation,--and--must--feel--that--it--would--be----" "Is there no medium, may I ask, between gabbling and drawling?"