“Now, Mr. Harrington--no offence--but I couldn’t have conceived it was so re’lly over head and ears an affair with you, as by your turning as pale as the table-cloth I see it re’lly is. For there was my son Peter, he admired her, and the alderman was not against it; but then the Jewess connexion was always a stumbling-block Peter could not swallow;--and as for my Lord Mowbray, that the town talked of so much as in love with the Jewess heiress--heiress, says I, very like, but not Jewess, I’ll engage; and, said I, from the first, he is no more in love with her than I am. So many of them young men of the ton is always following of them heiresses up and down for fashion or _fortin’s_ sake, without caring sixpence about them, that--I ask your pardon, Mr. Harrington--but I thought you might, in the alderman’s phrase, be _of the same kidney_; but since I see ‘tis a real downright affair of the heart, I shall make it my business to call myself at your house to-morrow in my carriage. No--that would look odd, and you a bachelor, and your people out o’town. But I’ll send my own footman with a message, I promise you now, let ‘em be ever so busy, if I hear any good news. No need to send if it be bad, for ill news flies apace evermore, all the world over, as Peter says. Tom! I say! is the fruit all in, Tom?--Oh! Mr. Harrington, don’t trouble yourself--you’re too polite, but I always get into my coach best myself, without hand or arm, except it be Tom’s. A good morning, sir--I sha’n’t forget to-morrow: so live upon hope--lover’s fare!--Home, Tom.” The next day, Mrs. Coates, more punctual to her word than many a more polished person, sent as early as it was possible “to set my heart at ease about Miss Montenero’s illness, and _other_ _matters_.” Mrs. Coates enclosed in her note two letters, which her maid had received that morning and last Tuesday. This was the way, as Mrs. Coates confessed, that the report reached her ears. The waiting-maid’s first letter had stated “that her lady, though she did not complain, had a cold and sore throat coming down, and this was alarming, with a spotted fever in the neighbourhood.” Mrs. Coates’s maid had, in repeating the news, “turned the sore throat into a spotted fever, or a scarlet fever, she did not rightly know which, but both were said by the apothecary to be generally fatal, where there was any Jewish taint in the blood.”