“Ah-ha,” replied the tutor, with a humorous twinkle. “Happy to hear it Indeed, I _had_ heard a rumor, a whisper! A little bird, as they say, brought a hint of it--I hope, Maitland, a happy omen! A pleasant woman of the world, one who can take her own part in society, and your part, too, a little--if you will let me say so--is exactly what you need. I congratulate you very heartily. And are we likely to see the young lady in Oxford? Where is she just now?” Maitland saw that the learned Bielby had indeed heard something, and not the right thing. He flushed all over as he thought of the truth, and of Mrs. St John Deloraine. “I’m sure I wish I knew,” said Maitland at last, beginning to find this consulting of the oracle a little difficult. “The fact is, that’s just what I wanted to consult you about. I--I’m afraid I’ve lost all traces of the young lady.” “Why, what do you mean?” asked the don, his face suddenly growing grave, while his voice had not yet lost its humorous tone. “She has not eloped? You don’t mean to tell me she has run away from you?” “I really don’t know what to say,” answered Maitland. “I’m afraid she has been run away with, that she is the victim of some plot or conspiracy.” “You surely can’t mean what you say” (and now the voice was gruffer than ever). “People don’t plot and conspire nowadays, if ever they did, which probably they didn’t! And who are the young lady’s people? Why don’t they look after her? I had heard she was a widow, but she must have friends.” “She is not a widow--she is an orphan,” said Maitland, blushing painfully. “I am her guardian in a kind of way.” “Why, the wrong stories have reached me altogether! I’m sure I beg your pardon, but did you tell me her name?” “Her name is Shields--Margaret Shields”--(“Not the name I was told,” muttered Bielby)--“and her father was a man who had been rather unsuccessful in life.” “What was his profession, what did he do?” “He had been a sailor, I think,” said the academic philanthropist; “but when I knew him he had left the sea, and was, in fact, as far as he was anything, a professional tattooer.” “What’s that?” “He tattooed patterns on sailors and people of that class for a livelihood.” Bielby sat perfectly silent for a few minutes, and no one who saw him could doubt that his silence arose from a conscious want of words on a level with the situation. “Has Miss--h’m, Spears--Shields? thank you; has she been an orphan long?” he asked, at length. He was clearly trying to hope that the most undesirable prospective father-in-law described by Maitland had long been removed from the opportunity of forming his daughter’s character. “I only heard of his death yesterday,” said Maitland. “Was it sudden?” “Why, yes. The fact is, he was a man of rather irregular habits, and he was discovered dead in one of the carts belonging to the Vestry of St George’s, Hanover Square.”