"Well, now. Tell his lordship that we are coming; and trust us, Mr. Bowie: we do not look very villainous, do we?" "Faith, 'deed then, and I suppose not," said Bowie, using the verb which, in his cautious, Scottish tongue, expresses complete certainty. The truth is, that Bowie adores both Sabina and her husband, who are, he says, "just fit to be put under a glass case on the sideboard, like twa wee china angels." In half an hour they were in Scoutbush's rooms. They found the little man lying on his sofa, in his dressing-gown, looking pale and pitiable enough. He had been trying to read; for the table by him was covered with books; but either gunnery and mathematics had injured his eyes, or he had been crying; Sabina inclined to the latter opinion. "This is very kind of you both; but I don't want you, Claude. I want Mrs. Mellot. You go to the window with Bowie." Bowie and Claude shrugged their shoulders at each other, and departed. "Now, Mrs. Mellot, I can't help looking up to you as a mother." "Complimentary to my youth," says Sabina, who always calls herself young when she is called old, and old when she is called young. "I didn't mean to be rude. But one does long to open one's heart. I never had any mother to talk to, you know; and I can't tell my aunt; and Valencia is so flighty; and I thought you would give me one chance more. Don't laugh at me, I say. I am really past laughing at." "I see you are, you poor creature," says Sabina, melting; and a long conversation follows, while Claude and Bowie exchange confidences, and arrive at no result beyond the undeniable assertion; "it is a very bad job." Presently Sabina comes out, and Scoutbush calls cheerfully from the sofa:-- "Bowie, get my bath and things to dress; and order me the cab in half an hour. Good-bye, you dear people, I shall never thank you enough." Away go Claude and Sabina in a hack-cab. "What have you done?" "Given him what he entreated for--another chance with Marie." "It will only madden him all the more. Why let him try, when you know it is hopeless." "Why, I had not the heart to refuse, that's the truth; and besides, I don't know that it is hopeless." "All the naughtier of you, to let him run the chance of making a fool of himself." "I don't know that he will make such a great fool of himself. As he says, his grandfather married an actress, and why should not he?" "Simply because she won't marry him." "And how do you know that, sir? You fancy that you understand all the women's hearts in England, just because you have found out the secret of managing one little fool." "Managing her, quotha! Being managed by her, till my quiet house is turned into a perfect volcano of match-making. Why, I thought he was to marry Manchestrina."