"Don't blame me if the gay widow I introduced to you the week before last, should prove to be a _flam_, as my dear father used to call it.... I am sorry to say there are great suspicions of it going about here. She left us telling everybody that she should be back in two days; and it is now more than ten since she started, and no soul has heard a word about her since. This looks odd, and bad enough, you will think; but it is not the worst part of the story, I'm sorry to say, _paw de too_, as you shall hear. When she first came to Cheltenham she took very good rooms ... a separate drawing-room, which always looks well ... and dress, and all that, quite corresponding, but no servants nor carriage, nor anything of the high-flying kind.... Now observe, Magnus, what follows, and then I think that you will come to a right notion of what sort of person you have got to deal with. No sooner did Mrs. Barnaby get acquainted with Lord Mucklebury then she set off living at the rate of some thousands a-year; and the worst is, as far as I am concerned, that she coaxed me to go round bespeaking and ordering everything for her. I know you will tell me, Magnus, that my father's daughter ought to have known better, and so I ought; but, upon my word, she took me in so completely that I never felt a single moment's doubt about the truth of all she said.... And I believe, too, that the superior sort of elegant look of that beautiful Miss Willoughby went for something with me. Having told you all this, it won't be necessary, I fancy, to say much more in respect to putting you on your guard.... Of course, you will take care to do nothing in the way of standing bail, or anything of that sort ... _paw see bate_, you will say. All Cheltenham is talking about it; and I was told at breakfast this morning that Simmons, who furnished the carriage, horses, and servants, is gone to London to look after her; and that Wright the mercer, and several others, talk of doing the same. _Too sell aw man we_; but it can't be helped.... So many people, too, come to me for information, just as if I knew any more about her than anybody else at the boarding table.... That queer Lady Elizabeth Norris sent for me yesterday, begging I would call upon her; and when I got there I found it was for nothing in the world but to ask me questions about this Mrs. Barnaby. And there was that noble-looking Colonel Hubert, who sat and listened to every word I uttered just as if he had been as curious an old woman as his aunt: _maize eel foe dear_, Magnus, that men are sometimes quite as curious as women.... However, they neither of them got much worth hearing out of me; and yet I almost thought at one time that the high and mighty Colonel was