"A new crop of fools, fanatics, and hypocrites come up, since I remember them, and the old ones gone down to enrich that patch of ground and send up their dirty juice in nettles, and thistles, and docks. 'In sure and certain hope.' Why should not they, the swine! as well as their masters, cunning, and drunken, and sneaks. I'd like to pay a fellow to cut their epitaphs. Why should I spare them a line of truth. Here I am, plain Mr. Dingwell. They don't care much about me; and when my Lord Verney went down the other day, to show them what a fool they have got for a master, amid congenial rejoicings, I don't hear that they troubled their heads with many regrets for my poor friend Arthur. Ha! There's the estuary, and Pendillion. These things don't change, my Lord Verney. Pity Lord Verney doesn't wear as well as Pendillion. There is Ware, over the water, if we had light to see it--to think of that shabby little whey-faced fool! Here we are; these are the trees of Malory, egad!" And with a shrug he repeated Homer's words, which say--"As are the generations of leaves, such are those of men." Up the avenue of Malory they were driving, and Dingwell looked out with a dismal curiosity upon the lightless front of the old house. "Cheerful reception!" he muttered. "Suppose we pick a hole in your title--a hole in your _pocket_--hey!" Dingwell's servant was at the door of the steward's house as they drew up, and helped the snarling old invalid down. When he got to the room the servant said-- "There's coffee, and everythink as you desired." "I'll take breath first, if you please--coffee afterwards." "Mrs. Mervyn hopes, sir, as how you'll parding her to-night, being so late, and not in good 'ealth herself, which she would been hup to receive you hotherwise," said the man, delivering his message eloquently. "Quite time enough to-morrow, and to-morrow--and to-morrow; and I don't care if our meeting creeps away, as that remarkable person, William Shakespeare, says--'in this petty pace.' This is more comfortable, egad! than Rosemary Court. I don't care, I say, if it creeps in that pretty pace, till we are both in heaven. What's Hecuba to me, or I to Hecuba? So help me off with these things." Lord Verney, on whom, in his moods, Mr. Dingwell commented so fully, was dispensing his hospitalities just then, on the other side of the estuary, at his princely mansion of Ware. The party was, it is true, small--very small, in fact. Lady Wimbledon had been there, and the Hon. Caroline Oldys, but they were now visiting Cardyllian at the Verney Arms.