"Ah--well!" continued Titmouse, after another whiff or two, with an air of commiseration, "if the poor gal's _booked_ for kingdom come--eh? it's no use; there's no harm done. Deuced poor, all of 'em, I hear! It's devilish hard, by the way, Gammon, that the prettiest gals are always the soonest picked off for the churchyard!" As soon as Gammon had completely mastered his feelings, he proceeded to excite the pride and ambition of Titmouse, by expatiating upon the splendor of an alliance with the last representative of the elder branch of so ancient and illustrious a house; in fact, when Gammon came, he said, to think of it, he feared it was _too_ grand a stroke, and that Lady Cecilia would not entertain the notion for a moment. He told Titmouse that she had refused crowds of young lords: that she would be a peeress of the realm in her own right, with an independent income of £5,000 a-year; and have mansions, seats, and castles, in each of the four quarters of the kingdom! Topics such as these excited and inflated Titmouse to the full extent desired by Mr. Gammon; who, moreover, with great solemnity of manner, gave him distinctly to understand, that on his being able to effect an alliance with the Lady Cecilia, absolutely depended his continuance in, or expulsion from, the possession of the whole Yatton property. Thus it came to pass, that Titmouse was penetrated by a far keener desire to ally himself to the Lady Cecilia, than ever the earl had experienced to bring about such an auspicious event; and at the very moment of Titmouse's catching sight of the earl, while pacing up and down the fir-tree walk, inhaling the soothing influence of his cigar--as I a short time ago presented him to the reader--he was tormenting himself with apprehensions that such a prize was too splendid for _him_ to draw, and asking himself the constantly recurring question, how, in the name of all that was funny, could he set the thing a-going? When Greek met Greek, _then_ came--it was said--the tug of war: and when the Earl of Dreddlington and Titmouse--a great fool and a little fool?--came to meet each other, impelled by the same wishes, and restrained by similar apprehensions, it was like the encounter of two wily diplomatists, sitting down with the intention of outwitting each other, in obtaining an object, in respect of which their aim was, in fact--unknown to each other--precisely coincident; this hidden coincidence being the exact point which their exquisite manœuvres had succeeded in reciprocally masking: it being quite possible for Talleyrand and Pozzo di Borgo, thus pitted against each other, to have separated, after a dozen long conferences, each having failed to secure their common object--peace.