ing all these? The next day, Wood asked for change
for a twenty-pound bill. Hayes said he had but three guineas. And, when
asked by Catherine where the money was that was paid the day before,
said that it was at the banker's. "The man is going to fly," said Wood;
"that is sure: if he does, I know him--he will leave his wife without a
shilling."

He watched him for several days regularly: two or three more bags were
added to the former number. "They are pretty things, guineas," thought
Wood, "and tell no tales, like bank-bills." And he thought over the days
when he and Macshane used to ride abroad in search of them.

I don't know what thoughts entered into Mr. Wood's brain; but the next
day, after seeing young Billings, to whom he actually made a present of
a guinea, that young man, in conversing with his mother, said, "Do you
know, mother, that if you were free, and married the Count, I should be
a lord? It's the German law, Mr. Wood says; and you know he was in them
countries with Marlborough."

"Ay, that he would," said Mr. Wood, "in Germany: but Germany isn't
England; and it's no use talking of such things."

"Hush, child!" said Mrs. Hayes, quite eagerly: "how can _I_ marry the
Count? Besides, a'n't I married, and isn't he too great a lord for me?"

"Too great a lord?--not a whit, mother. If it wasn't for Hayes, I might
be a lord now. He gave me five guineas only last week; but curse the
skinflint who never will part with a shilling."

"It's not so bad as his striking your mother, Tom. I had my stick up,
and was ready to fell him t'other night," added Mr. Wood. And herewith
he smiled, and looked steadily in Mrs. Catherine's face. She dared not
look again; but she felt that the old man knew a secret that she had
been trying to hide from herself. Fool! he knew it; and Hayes knew it
dimly: and never, never, since that day of the gala, had it left her,
sleeping or waking. When Hayes, in his fear, had proposed to sleep away
from her, she started with joy: she had been afraid that she might talk
in her sleep, and so let slip her horrible confession.

Old Wood knew all her history since the period of the Marylebone fete.
He had wormed it out of her, day by day; he had counselled her how to
act; warned her not to yield; to procure, at least, a certain provision
for her son, and a handsome settlement for herself, if she determined
on quitting her husband. The old man looked on the business in a proper
philosophical lig