I dined at Laurel Villa, Fulham, about two months after this conversation, and Linden and I found ourselves alone over the dessert--the young people having gone out for a stroll, attracted doubtless by the gay aspect of the Thames, which flows past the miniature grounds attached to the villa. Never had I seen Mr. Linden in so gay, so mirthful a mood. "Pass the decanter," he exclaimed, the instant the door had closed upon Tom and his _fiancée_. "Pass the decanter, Sharp; I have news for you, my boy, now they are gone." "Indeed! and what may the news be?" "Fill a bumper for yourself, and I'll give you a toast. Here's to the health and prosperity of the proprietor of the Holmford estate; and may he live a thousand years, and one over!--Hip--hip--hurra!" He swallowed his glass of wine, and then, in his intensity of glee, laughed himself purple. "You needn't stare so," he said, as soon as he had partially recovered breath; "I am the proprietor of the Holmford property--bought it for fifty-six thousand pounds of that young scant-grace and spendthrift, Palliser--fifteen thousand pounds less than what it cost him, with the outlay he has made upon it. Signed, sealed, delivered, paid for yesterday. Ha! ha! ho! Leave John Linden alone for a bargain! It's worth seventy thousand pounds if it's worth a shilling. I say," continued he, after a renewed spasm of exuberant mirth, "not a word about it to anybody--mind! I promised Palliser, who is quietly packing up to be off to Italy, or Australia, or Constantinople, or the devil--all of them, perhaps, in succession--not to mention a word about it till he was well off--you understand? Ha! ha!--ho! ho!" again burst out Mr. Linden. "I pity the poor creditors though! Bless you! I shouldn't have had it at anything like the price, only for his knowing that I was not likely to be running about exposing the affair, by asking lawyers whether an estate in a family's possession, as this was in Dursley's for three hundred years, had a good title or not. So be careful not to drop a word, even to Tom--for my honor's sake. A delicious bargain, and no mistake! Worth, if a penny, seventy thousand pounds. Ha! ha!--ho! ho!" "Then you have really parted with that enormous sum of money without having had the title to the estate professionally examined?" "Title! Fiddlestick! I looked over the deeds myself. Besides, haven't I told you the ancestors of Dursley, from whose executors Palliser purchased the estate, were in possession of it for centuries. What better title than prescription can there be?" "That may be true enough; but still"-- "I ought, you think, to have risked losing the bargain by delay, and have squandered time and money upon fellows in horse-hair wigs, in order to ascertain what I sufficiently well knew already? Pooh! I am not in my second childhood yet!"