own. They closed, locked,
shot the bolts and fastened the chain of the door. They had to be
reminded by the shaking of their darling dog Tasso's curly silky coat,
that he had not taken his evening's trot to notify malefactors of his
watchfulness and official wrath at sound of footfall or a fancied one.
Without consultation, they unbolted the door, and Tasso went forth, to
'compose his vesper hymn,' as Mr. Posterley once remarked amusingly.

Though not pretending to the Muse's crown so far, the little dog had
qualities to entrance the spinster sex. His mistresses talked of him; of
his readiness to go forth; of the audible first line of his hymn or
sonnet; of his instinct telling him that something was wrong in the
establishment. For most of the servants at Moorsedge were prostrated by a
fashionable epidemic; a slight attack, the doctor said; but Montague, the
butler, had withdrawn for the nursing of his wife; Perrin, the footman,
was confined to his chamber; Manton, the favourite maid, had appeared in
the morning with a face that caused her banishment to bed; and the cook,
Mrs. Bannister, then sighingly agreed to send up cold meat for the
ladies' dinner. Hence their melancholy inhospitality to their cousin
Victor, who had, in spite of his errors, the right to claim his place at
their table, was 'of the blood,' they said. He was recognized as the
living prince of it. His every gesture, every word, recalled the General.
The trying scene with him had withered them, they did not speak of it;
each had to the other the look of a vessel that has come out of a gale.
Would they sleep? They scarcely dared ask it of themselves. They had done
rightly; silence upon that reflection seemed best. It was the silence of
an inward agitation; still they knew the power of good consciences to
summon sleep.

Tasso was usually timed for five minutes. They were astonished to
discover by the clock, that they had given him ten. He was very quiet: if
so, and for whatever he did, he had his reason, they said: he was a dog
endowed with reason: endowed--and how they wished that Mr. Stuart Rem
would admit it!--with, their love of the little dog believed (and Mr.
Posterley acquiesced), a soul. Do but think it of dear animals, and any
form of cruelty to them becomes an impossibility, Mr. Stuart Rem! But he
would not be convinced: ungenerously indeed he named Mr. Posterley a
courtier. The ladies could have retorted, that Mr. Posterley had not a
brother w