“That's as you please; but remember this,--if the day should come that I need any of these, details you have given me this morning, I'll quote them, and you too, as their author; and if I bring an old house about your ears, look out sharp for a falling chimney-pot! You gave me a piece of advice awhile ago,” continued he, as he put on his hat before the glass, and arranged his necktie. “Let me repay you with two, which you will find useful in their several ways: Don't show your hand when you play with as shrewd men as myself; and, Don't offer a friend such execrable tobacco as that on the chimney;” and with this he nodded and strolled out, humming an air as he crossed the Castle yard and entered the city. CHAPTER XLI. THE PRIORY IN ITS DESERTION The old Judge was very sad after Lucy's departure from the Priory. While she lived there they had not seen much of each other, it is true. They met at meal-times, and now and then Sir William would send up the housekeeper to announce a visit from him; but there is a sense of companionship in the consciousness that under the same roof with you dwells one upon whose affection you can draw, whose sympathy will be with you in your hour of need; and this the old man now felt to be waiting; and he wandered restlessly about the house and the garden, tenacious to see that nothing she liked or loved was threatened with any change, and repeating to all that she must find everything as she left it when she came back again. Sewell had been recalled to the country by the illness of his child, and they were not expected at the Priory for at least a week or two longer. Haire had gone on circuit, and even Beattie the Judge only saw hurriedly and at long intervals. With Lady Lendrick he had just had a most angry correspondence, ending in one of those estrangements which, had they been nations instead of individuals, would have been marked by the recall of their several envoys, but which they were satisfied to signalize by an order at the Priory gate-lodge not to admit her Ladyship's carriage, and an equally determined command at Merrion Square for the porter to take in no letters that came from the Chief Baron. Lest the world should connect this breach with any interest in my story, I may as well declare at once the incident had no possible bearing upon it. It was a little episode entirely self-contained, and consisted in Lady Lendrick having taken advantage of Sir William's illness and confinement to house to send for and use his carriage-horses,--a liberty which he resented by a most furious letter, to which the rejoinder begot another infinitely more sarcastic,--the correspondence ending by a printed notice which her Ladyship received in an envelope, that the Chief Baron's horses would be sold on the ensuing Saturday at Dycer's to the highest bidder, his Lordship having no further use for them.