and I have seen enough to
satisfy me that he and his servant will relieve each other at the
window, so as never to lose sight of your house here, night or day. That
the parson suspects the real truth is of course impossible. But that
he firmly believes I mean some mischief to young Armadale, and that you
have entirely confirmed him in that conviction, is as plain as that two
and two make four. And this has happened (as you helplessly remind me)
just when we have answered the advertisement, and when we may expect the
major's inquiries to be made in a few days' time.

"Surely, here is a terrible situation for two women to find themselves
in? A fiddlestick's end for the situation! We have got an easy way out
of it--thanks, Mother Oldershaw, to what I myself forced you to do, not
three hours before the Somersetshire clergyman met with us.

"Has that venomous little quarrel of ours this morning--after we had
pounced on the major's advertisement in the newspaper--quite slipped out
of your memory? Have you forgotten how I persisted in my opinion that
you were a great deal too well known in London to appear safely as my
reference in your own name, or to receive an inquiring lady or gentleman
(as you were rash enough to propose) in your own house? Don't you
remember what a passion you were in when I brought our dispute to an end
by declining to stir a step in the matter, unless I could conclude my
application to Major Milroy by referring him to an address at which you
were totally unknown, and to a name which might be anything you pleased,
as long as it was not yours? What a look you gave me when you found
there was nothing for it but to drop the whole speculation or to let
me have my own way! How you fumed over the lodging hunting on the other
side of the Park! and how you groaned when you came back, possessed of
furnished apartments in respectable Bayswater, over the useless expense
I had put you to!

"What do you think of those furnished apartments _now_, you obstinate
old woman? Here we are, with discovery threatening us at our very door,
and with no hope of escape unless we can contrive to disappear from the
parson in the dark. And there are the lodgings in Bayswater, to which no
inquisitive strangers have traced either you or me, ready and waiting
to swallow us up--the lodgings in which we can escape all further
molestation, and answer the major's inquiries at our ease. Can you see,
at last, a little further than your po