MR. LARKIN got into his cab, and ordered the cabman, in a loud voice, to drive to Verney House. "Didn't he know Verney House? He thought every cabman in London knew Verney House! The house of Lord Viscount Verney, in ---- Square. Why it fills up a whole side of it!" He looked at his watch. He had thirty-seven minutes to reach it in. It was partly to get rid of a spare half hour, that he had paid his unprofitable visit to Rosemary Court. Mr. Larkin registered a vow to confer no more with Mr. Dingwell. He eased his feelings by making a note of this resolution in that valuable little memorandum book which he carried about with him in his pocket. "_Saw Mr. Dingwell this day--as usual impracticable and ill-bred to a hopeless degree--waste of time and worse--resolved that this gentleman being inaccessible to reason, is not to be argued, but DEALT with, should occasion hereafter arise for influencing his conduct._" Somewhere about Temple Bar, Mr. Larkin's cab got locked in a string of vehicles, and he put his head out of window, not being sorry for an opportunity of astonishing the citizens by calling to the driver-- "I say, my good fellow, can't you get on? I told Lord Verney to expect me at half-past one. Do, pray, get me out of this, _any_ way, and you shall have a gratuity of half-a-crown. Verney House is a good way from this. _Do_ try. His lordship will be as much obliged to you as I am." Mr. Larkin's assiduities and flatteries were, in truth, telling upon Lord Verney, with whom he was stealing into a general confidence which alarmed many people, and which Cleve Verney hated more than ever. With the pretty mansion of Hazelden, the relations, as Lord Verney would have said of the House of Ware, were no longer friendly. This was another instance of the fragility of human arrangements, and the vanity of human hopes. The altar had been erected, the swine sacrificed, and the augurs and haruspices on both sides had predicted nothing but amity and concord. Game, fruit, and venison, went and came,--"Much good may it do your good heart." "It was ill-killed," &c. Master Shallow and Master Page could not have been more courteous on such occasions. But on the _fête champêtre_ had descended a sudden procella. The roses were whirling high in the darkened air, the flatteries and laughter were drowned in thunder, and the fiddles and glasses smashed with hailstones as large as potatoes. A general election had come and gone, and in that brief civil war old Vane Etherage was found at the wrong side. In Lord Verney's language neighbour meant something like vassal, and Etherage who had set up his banner and arrayed his power on the other side, was a rebel--the less forgivable that he had, as was authentically demonstrated, by this step himself inflicted that defeat in the county which had wounded Lord Verney to the quick.