.
Next morning he gave it to me to take; and here it is.'

'You didn't deliver it then, my good friend?' said Mr Chester, twirling
Dolly's note between his finger and thumb, and feigning to be surprised.

'I supposed you'd want to have it,' retorted Hugh. 'Burn one, burn all,
I thought.'

'My devil-may-care acquaintance,' said Mr Chester--'really if you do not
draw some nicer distinctions, your career will be cut short with most
surprising suddenness. Don't you know that the letter you brought to
me, was directed to my son who resides in this very place? And can you
descry no difference between his letters and those addressed to other
people?'

'If you don't want it,' said Hugh, disconcerted by this reproof, for he
had expected high praise, 'give it me back, and I'll deliver it. I don't
know how to please you, master.'

'I shall deliver it,' returned his patron, putting it away after a
moment's consideration, 'myself. Does the young lady walk out, on fine
mornings?'

'Mostly--about noon is her usual time.'

'Alone?'

'Yes, alone.'

'Where?'

'In the grounds before the house.--Them that the footpath crosses.'

'If the weather should be fine, I may throw myself in her way to-morrow,
perhaps,' said Mr Chester, as coolly as if she were one of his ordinary
acquaintance. 'Mr Hugh, if I should ride up to the Maypole door, you
will do me the favour only to have seen me once. You must suppress your
gratitude, and endeavour to forget my forbearance in the matter of the
bracelet. It is natural it should break out, and it does you honour; but
when other folks are by, you must, for your own sake and safety, be as
like your usual self as though you owed me no obligation whatever, and
had never stood within these walls. You comprehend me?'

Hugh understood him perfectly. After a pause he muttered that he hoped
his patron would involve him in no trouble about this last letter;
for he had kept it back solely with the view of pleasing him. He was
continuing in this strain, when Mr Chester with a most beneficent and
patronising air cut him short by saying:

'My good fellow, you have my promise, my word, my sealed bond (for a
verbal pledge with me is quite as good), that I will always protect you
so long as you deserve it. Now, do set your mind at rest. Keep it at
ease, I beg of you. When a man puts himself in my power so thoroughly as
you have done, I really feel as though he had a kind of claim upon me. I
am more dispos