ttle
think so from their treatment of me--I was at school with them. I knew
them before they became unintelligible, though they always had a turn for
it. To dress well, to be refined, to marry well--I understand all that
perfectly; but who could understand them? Not they themselves, I am
certain! And now penniless! and not only that, but lawyers! You know that
Mrs. Chump has commenced an action?--no? Oh, yes! but I shall have to
tell you the whole story."

"What is it?--they want money?" said Emilia.

"I will tell you. Our poor gentlemanly organist, whom you knew, was
really a baronet's son, and inherited the title."

Emilia interrupted her: "Oh, do let me hear about them!"

"Well, my dear, this unfortunate--I may call him 'lover,' for if a man
does not stamp the truth of his affection with a pistol, what other means
has he? And just a word as to romance. I have been sighing for it--no one
would think so--all my life. And who would have thought that these poor
Poles should have lived to convince me of the folly! Oh, delicious
humdrum!--there is nothing like it. But you are anxious, naturally. Poor
Sir Purcell Barren--he may or may not have been mad, but when he was
brought to the house at Brookfield--quite by chance--I mean, his
body--two labouring men found him by a tree--I don't know whether you
remembered a pollard-willow that stood all white and rotten by the water
in the fir-wood:--well, as I said, mad or not, no sooner did poor
Cornelia see him than she shrieked that she was the cause of his death.
He was laid in the hall--which I have so often trod! and there Cornelia
sat by his poor dead body, and accused Wilfrid and her father of every
unkindness. They say that the scene was terrible. Wilfrid--but I need not
tell you his character. He flutters from flower to flower, but he has
feeling Now comes the worst of all--in one sense; that is, looking on it
as people of the world; and being in the world, we must take a worldly
view occasionally. Mr. Pole--you remember how he behaved once at
Besworth: or, no; you were not there, but he used your name. His mania
was, as everybody could see, to marry his children grandly. I don't blame
him in any way. Still, he was not justified in living beyond his means to
that end, speculating rashly, and concealing his actual circumstances.
Well, Mr. Pericles and he were involved together; that is, Mr.
Pericles--"

"Is Mr. Pericles near us now?" said Emilia quickly.

"We will co