my heart of something worse than I
had heard.

She hailed Julia to run and fetch the battledores, and then told me she
had been obliged to confiscate the newspapers that morning and cast
the burden on post-office negligence. 'They reach grandada's hands by
afternoon post, Harry, and he finds objectionable passages blotted or
cut out; and as long as the scissors don't touch the business columns
and the debates, he never asks me what I have been doing. He thinks I
keep a scrap-book. I haven't often time in the morning to run an eye all
over the paper. This morning it was the first thing I saw.'

What had she seen? She led me out of view of the windows and showed me.

My father was accused of having stood up at a public dinner and returned
thanks on behalf of an Estate of the Realm: it read monstrously. I
ceased to think of the suffering inflicted on me by my grandfather.

Janet and I, side by side with the captain and Julia, carried on the
game of battledore and shuttlecock, in a match to see whether the
unmarried could keep the shuttle flying as long as the married, with
varying fortunes. She gazed on me, to give me the comfort of her
sympathy, too much, and I was too intent on the vision of my father
either persecuted by lies or guilty of hideous follies, to allow the
match to be a fair one. So Julia could inform the squire that she
and William had given the unmarried pair a handsome beating, when he
appeared peeping round one of the shed-pillars.

'Of course you beat 'em,' said the squire. 'It 's not my girl's fault.'
He said more, to the old tune, which drove Janet away.

I remembered, when back in the London vortex, the curious soft beauty
she won from casting up her eyes to watch the descending feathers, and
the brilliant direct beam of those thick-browed, firm, clear eyes, with
her frown, and her set lips and brave figure, when she was in the act
of striking to keep up a regular quick fusilade. I had need of calm
memories. The town was astir, and humming with one name.

CHAPTER XLII. THE MARQUIS OF EDBURY AND HIS PUPPET

I passed from man to man, hearing hints and hesitations, alarming
half-remarks, presumed to be addressed to one who could supply the
remainder, and deduce consequences. There was a clearer atmosphere in
the street of Clubs. Jennings was the first of my father's more intimate
acquaintances to meet me frankly. He spoke, though not with great
seriousness, of the rumour of a possible pros