"And oh, Amor," she went on, "those odious postillions pushed their way to the room and wanted money and Sir George kindly came to the rescue and bade them begone." "Did he?" was all that Vernon would vouchsafe in thanks to this timely assistance. Phyllida, abashed by her lover's bad manners, seemed inclined to apologize for them with tears. And now Sir George did what most Englishmen would have done under the circumstances--he walked out of the room in a very stately way. No doubt the banker thought the strength of feeling which had led him to reveal his life's tragedy would kindle an equal emotion in the heart of Miss Courteen and that when he returned he would find the raffish intruder gone. This was in fact the precise result of his withdrawal. When he returned, Mr. Vernon was gone. But neither was Miss Phyllida Courteen anywhere in sight. _Chapter the Thirty-second_ THE HORRID ADVENTURES OF BEAU RIPPLE AND MRS. COURTEEN We will, if you please, take for granted the persuasions used by Mr. Vernon to induce Phyllida to continue upon her headlong course. He rode beside her on this second stage of her adventure, and I shall have something to say of that drive together through the darkness of wind and rain. We will take for granted Sir George Repington's indignation, expressed with many a z----ds and many a pinch of snuff, and since there are a number of fine folk abroad on this most atrocious evening, it is only just that we should pay them the compliment of relating their horrid adventures. You have not forgotten, I hope, the sensation created in Curtain Wells by the sight of Beau Ripple and Mrs. Courteen ensconced in the former's vivid yellow postchaise, driven by the former's diminutive groom Pridgeon. You made one of a host of conjectures, or rather you would have done had you not been in the heart of the secret, thanks to the honest, straightforward way in which I have treated you throughout this story. They went off with 'Tally-ho' and 'Whoo-whoop, gone away!' They rattled over the cobbles and clattered over the kidney stones and jolted prodigiously over a kerb that protruded too far into the road. They bumped over a log of wood dropped by old Mother Hubbard in her frantick endeavours to gain the protection of the pavement, they ground the face of little Miss Muffet's favourite wax doll to minutest grains of powder. They experienced a second's muffled progress as with two wheels they rolled over little Tommy Trout's Easter coat and with the others made a broad smear over little Sammy Green's satchel and cracked his new Horn Book into a thousand splinters.