sank back into his chair. He was much too stunned to speculate on the
subject, or ask himself what was going to happen. Whatever was going
to happen, there was an end of _him_. He had eaten the last All-Souls
pudding that he ever would have presented to him under _that_ roof. He
sank back in the depth of despair upon his seat, and suffered the
claret to pass him in the agony of his feelings. Mr Wentworth and Mrs
Morgan were avenged.

This was how it came to be noised abroad in Carlingford that some great
change of a highly favourable character was about to occur in the
circumstances and position of the Curate of St Roque's. It was discussed
next day throughout the town, as soon as people had taken breath after
telling each other about Rosa Elsworthy, who had indisputably been
carried off from her uncle's house on the previous night. When the
Wentworth family were at dinner, and just as the board was being spread
in the Rectory, where Mrs Morgan was half an hour later than usual,
having company, it had been discovered in Elsworthy's that the prison
was vacant, and the poor little bird had flown. Mr Wentworth was aware
of a tumult about the shop when he went to the Miss Wodehouses, but
was preoccupied, and paid no attention; but Mr Leeson, who was not
preoccupied, had already heard all about it when he entered the Rectory.
That day it was all over the town, as may be supposed. The poor, little,
wicked, unfortunate creature had disappeared, no one knew how, at the
moment, apparently, when Elsworthy went to the railway for the evening
papers, a time when the errand-boys were generally rampant in the
well-conducted shop. Mrs Elsworthy, for her part, had seized that moment
to relieve her soul by confiding to Mrs Hayles next door how she was
worrited to death with one thing and another, and did not expect to be
alive to tell the tale if things went on like this for another month,
but that Elsworthy was infatuated like, and wouldn't send the hussy
away, his wife complained to her sympathetic neighbour. When Elsworthy
came back, however, he was struck by the silence in the house, and sent
the reluctant woman up-stairs--"To see if she's been and made away with
herself, I suppose," the indignant wife said, as she obeyed, leaving Mrs
Hayles full of curiosity on the steps of the door. Mrs Elsworthy,
however uttered a shriek a moment after, and came down, with a
frightened face, carrying a large pin-cushion, upon which, skewered
th