"By the by," said Miss Mordaunt, after a short pause—for she never remained long silent,—"this audacious outrage reminds me of something your uncle Sir Ralph Walsingham was telling me one day, when you interrupted him in the middle. I think he informed me that about six or seven years ago—when you were only eighteen or nineteen—you were staying at your dear lamented father's country-house, where you were quite alone—for of course one does not call the servants anybody; when the mansion was broken into by robbers during the night——" "Julia!" exclaimed Lady Hatfield, her whole frame fearfully convulsed by the powerful though useless efforts which she made to subdue her agitation: "never, I implore you, again allude to that dreadful event!" "Well—I never will," said Miss Mordaunt. "And yet, if one must not speak of Love—nor yet of marriage—nor yet of midnight burglaries——" "Nay—I was wrong to cut you short thus abruptly," remarked Lady Hatfield, now endeavouring to rob her prayer of the importance with which her solemn earnestness of manner had invested it: "only, do choose some more enlivening topic after the fright which we have just experienced." "The first thing to-morrow morning," said Miss Mordaunt, who had not noticed the full extent of the impression which her allusion to the burglary of some years back had made upon her companion—for Julia was too flippant, superficial, and volatile to pay much attention to the emotions of others,—"the first thing to-morrow morning we must give information to the Bow Street runners concerning this highway robbery: secondly, we must write to the landlord at Staines to tell him what a couple of cowardly fellows he has got in the shape of these postillions;—and thirdly, you must discharge old Mason, who is evidently incapable of protecting his mistress, much less her friends." "Discharge old Mason!" exclaimed Lady Hatfield: "impossible! How could he have protected us! He is unarmed—whereas the highwayman flourished two large pistols, doubtless loaded. But here we are safe at Hounslow!" The carriage drew up at the door of the hotel in this town; and the postillions immediately narrated the particulars of the robbery to the landlord and his attendant tribe of hangers-on. "Well, this is fortunate!" cried the landlord, when the tale was told: "quite a God-send, as one may say." "As how, please, sir?" exclaimed the elder postboy, astonished at the remark. "Why—it happens that Dykes, the famous Bow Street officer, is in the hotel at this very instant," said the landlord. "John," he added, turning to a waiter who stood near, "beg Mr. Dykes to step this way." "And what's Dykes doing down here?" asked the postboy, when the waiter had disappeared to execute the commission he had received. "He's been investigating a 'cendiary fire," replied an ostler; for the landlord, disdaining to hold any farther converse with a postillion, had stepped up to the window to inquire whether the ladies chose to alight.