ed the part of informant to the
inquisitive harridan: 'Her poor dear good-for-nothing Edbury! whose only
cure would be a nice, well-conducted girl, an heiress.' She had cast her
eye on Anna Penrhys, but considered her antecedents doubtful. Spotless
innocence was the sole receipt for Edbury's malady. My father, in a fit
of bold irony, proposed Lady Kane for President of his Tattle and Scandal
Club,--a club of ladies dotted with select gentlemen, the idea of which
Jorian DeWitt claimed the merit of starting, and my father surrendered it
to him, with the reservation, that Jorian intended an association of
backbiters pledged to reveal all they knew, whereas the Club, in its
present form, was an engine of morality and decency, and a social
safeguard, as well as an amusement. It comprised a Committee of
Investigation, and a Court of Appeal; its object was to arraign slander.
Lady Kane declined the honour. 'I am not a washerwoman,' she said to me,
and spoke of where dirty linen should be washed, and was distressingly
broad in her innuendoes concerning Edbury's stepmother. This Club sat and
became a terror for a month, adding something to my father's reputation.
His inexhaustible conversational art and humour gave it such vitality as
it had. Ladies of any age might apply for admission when well seconded:
gentlemen under forty-five years were rigidly excluded, and the seniors
must also have passed through the marriage ceremony.

Outside tattle and scandal declared, that the Club was originated to
serve as a club for Lady Edbury, but I chose to have no opinion upon what
I knew nothing of.

These matters were all ephemeral, and freaks; they produced, however,
somewhat of the same effect on me as on my father, in persuading me that
he was born for the sphere he occupied, and rendering me rather callous
as to the sources of ways and means. I put my name to a bond for several
thousand pounds, in conjunction with Lord Edbury, thinking my father
right in wishing to keep my cheque-book unworried, lest the squire should
be seized with a spasm of curiosity before the two months were over. 'I
promise you I surprise him,' my father said repeatedly. He did not say
how: I had the suspicion that he did not know. His confidence and my
growing recklessness acted in unison.

Happily the newspapers were quiet. I hoped consequently to find peace at
Riversley; but there the rumours of the Grand Parade were fabulous,
thanks to Captain Bulsted and J