ditch."

"Leonore? Hiding in a ditch?"

"With her face blacked, and prepared to run away to the
gipsies--ha--ha--ha!"

"I never heard a word of it, Val."

"Not likely, ma'am; we were all sworn to secrecy. I believe it was even
kept dark from the general, for Sue's a good sort really, and Leo was
such a little thing. Though she tried to brave it out she couldn't; and
when she blubbed, the tears and the muck--you never saw such a little
goblin face in your life."

"And you were in her confidence? Talk about old days to her now."

"Trust me. I always wanted to talk about them, but--I say, why were we
never invited to meet the Stubbses when they came to the Abbey? We never
were. Never once."

"General Boldero was not proud of his son-in-law. No one was ever
invited to meet him."

"They say it was he who made the match, though."

It certainly was difficult to keep Val to the point. The marriage now
dissolved was nothing to him nor to any one, but since it kept Leonore
as a topic of conversation, and since by means of the past the old lady
could gradually work her way back to the present, she did not cut short
her grandson's curiosity, and upon subsequent reflection was not
displeased that he had evinced it.

A fine day coming soon after this, Val prepared for action.

First of all he prepared his mind; had he anything else he wished to do?
Was there anything tempting in the way of sport to be had? He considered
and shook his head. His grandmother's shooting was limited, and he had
strained its capacity rather fully of late. The river was too full for
fishing. The hounds were not running that day. Accordingly, hey! for the
Abbey, and for what might come of it.

Thus much decided, what should he wear? No girl in her teens, no dandy
in his first London season was more serious over the great affair of his
clothes than this country fellow when occasion warranted. Worn and
frayed and weather-stained his daily homespun might be, but he had a
bill at the best tailor's in Bond Street which he never thought of
paying, and which his grandmother never thought of grudging. She quietly
annexed the bill, and Val heard no more of it.

He was thus well provided for emergencies like the present. He had thick
and thin suits, dark and light, loose and slightly shaped--he had just
received one of the last, of a delightful tawny brown colour, which he
had not yet worn. It had arrived a few hours after his last call on the
Boldero