f's
deputy at Chester, when that rascally Jew-tailor followed me?
Dangerfield--Dangerfield--Dangerfield--no; or could it be that row at
Taunton? or the custom-house officer--let me see--1751; no, he was a
taller man--yes, I remember him; it is _not_ he. Or was he at Dick
Luscome's duel?' and he lay awake half the night thinking of him; for he
was not only a puzzle, but there was a sort of suspicion of danger and
he knew not what, throbbing in his soul whenever his reverie conjured up
that impenetrable, white scoffing face.

CHAPTER XIX.

IN WHICH THE GENTLEMEN FOLLOW THE LADIES.

Having had as much claret as they cared for, the gentlemen fluttered
gaily into the drawing-room, and Puddock, who made up to Miss Gertrude,
and had just started afresh, and in a rather more sentimental vein, was
a good deal scandalised, and put out by the general's reciting with
jolly emphasis, and calling thereto his daughter's special attention,
his receipt for 'surprising a weaver,' which he embellished with two or
three burlesque improvements of his own, which Puddock, amidst his
blushes and confusion, allowed to pass without a protest. Aunt Rebecca
was the only person present who pointedly refused to laugh; and with a
slight shudder and momentary elevation of her eyes, said, 'wicked and
unnatural cruelty!' at which sentiment Puddock used his
pocket-handkerchief in rather an agitated manner.

''Tis a thing I've never done myself--that is, I've never seen it done,'
said Little Puddock, suffused with blushes, as he pleaded his cause at
the bar of humanity--for those were the days of Howard, and the fair sex
had taken up the philanthropist. 'The--the--receipt--'tis, you see, a
thing I happened to meet--and--and just read it in the--in a book--and
the--I--a----'

Aunt Becky, with her shoulders raised in a shudder, and an agonised and
peremptory 'there, there, _there_,' moved out of hearing in dignified
disgust, to the general's high entertainment, who enjoyed her assaults
upon innocent Puddock, and indeed took her attacks upon himself, when
executed with moderation, hilariously enough--a misplaced good-humour
which never failed to fire Aunt Becky's just resentment.

Indeed, the general was so tickled with this joke that he kept it going
for the rest of the evening, by sly allusions and mischievous puns. As
for instance, at supper, when Aunt Rebecca was deploring the miserable
depression of the silk manufacture, and the distress