y it was different; she was a
woman of charity, but she touched the world at too many points not to
feel its vibrations. However, the dear little woman planted herself
firmly; to the eye she was still enough. It was not from Ambrose Tester
that I first heard of Lord Vandeleur's death; it was announced, with a
quarter of a column of "padding," in the _Times_. I have always known
the _Times_ was a wonderful journal, but this never came home to me so
much as when it produced a quarter of a column about Lord Vandeleur. It
was a triumph of word-spinning. If he had carried out his vocation, if
he had been a tailor or a hatter (that's how I see him), there might
have been something to say about him. But he missed his vocation, he
missed everything but posthumous honors. I was so sure Ambrose Tester
would come in that afternoon, and so sure he knew I should expect him,
that I threw over an engagement on purpose. But he didn't come in, nor
the next day, nor the next. There were two possible explanations of
his absence. One was that he was giving all his time to consoling Lady
Vandeleur; the other was that he was giving it all, as a blind, to
Joscelind Bernardstone. Both proved incorrect, for when he at last
turned up he told me he had been for a week in the country, at his
father's. Sir Edmund also had been unwell; but he had pulled through
better than poor Lord Vandeleur. I wondered at first whether his son had
been talking over with him the question of a change of base; but guessed
in a moment that he had not suffered this alarm. I don't think that
Ambrose would have spared him if he had thought it necessary to give him
warning; but he probably held that his father would have no ground for
complaint so long as he should marry some one; would have no right to
remonstrate if he simply transferred his contract. Lady Vandeleur had
had two children (whom she had lost), and might, therefore, have
others whom she should n't lose; that would have been a reply to nice
discriminations on Sir Edmund's part.

V.

In reality, what the young man had been doing was thinking it over
beneath his ancestral oaks and beeches. His countenance showed
this,--showed it more than Miss Bernardstone could have liked. He looked
like a man who was crossed, not like a man who was happy, in love. I was
no more disposed than before to help him out with his plot, but at the
end of ten minutes we were articulately discussing it. When I say _we_
were, I