"She doesn't; she can't love such a scoundrel. The brainless, little, thoughtless idiot! She believed all that of you directly, and ran off to marry the blackguard who has been trying for weeks to undermine you, so as to get my money. Why, I find he has been constantly coming here to see her, and she in her vanity played with him--a little coquette-- played with the confounded serpent, till he wound round and stung her." Clive hung his head. "And all the time you and I would have been ready to knock the man down who had dared to suggest that she was trifling with you. Bah! they're a poor, weak, pitiful lot, the women, Clive. I've doctored enough of them to know all their little weaknesses, my lad. A poor, pitiful lot!" "Do you think so?" said Clive quietly. "Well, some of them. But, by jingo, boy, what a punishment for the designing scoundrel. He had heard poor old Grantham let drop that he had put Janet--I mean that girl--down for a big sum, and he played for it--gambled. He meant that. By jingo! his face when he found he had lost! I'm going to let you know, too, what I have done." "What have you done?" said Clive, rather anxiously. "Made a new will, sir, and had the old one burned before my eyes. I've gone on saving for that girl, and the money's hers, and she shall have it when I die; but he shan't. I went to old Belton, told him what I wanted, and he went into it _con amore_, for he dislikes Master Jessop consumedly. He says it's a natural reversion--the harking back to a bad strain that once got into the Reed blood." "But what did you do?" said Clive. "Do, boy! tied the money up as tight as the law can tie it. My little bit is to be in the hands of trustees, and she will get the dividends, but she cannot sell out and give the money to your blackguard of a brother; and in a very short time he'll know it, begin to ill-use her, and go on till she shows that she has some spirit, and then she'll turn upon him, there'll be a row, and she'll come home." Clive sat frowning. "It will be my revenge upon the scoundrel. I say, by the way, that little parlour-maid, Lyddy, what about her?" "I know nothing," said Clive sadly. "The scoundrel has spirited her away somewhere, I suppose. Ah! well, they'll make him suffer for it in the long-run, and you and I will have a pretty revenge. There now, not another word about either of them. You told me you were going down to Derbyshire again." "Yes, to-morrow."