r
conspiracy."

"You surely can't mean what you say" (and now the voice was gruffer than
ever). "People don't plot and conspire nowadays, if ever they did, which
probably they didn't! And who are the young lady's people? Why don't
they look after her? I had heard she was a widow, but she must have
friends."

"She is not a widow--she is an orphan," said Maitland, blushing
painfully. "I am her guardian in a kind of way."

"Why, the wrong stories have reached me altogether! I'm sure I beg your
pardon, but did you tell me her name?"

"Her name is Shields--Margaret Shields"--("Not the name I was told,"
muttered Bielby)--"and her father was a man who had been rather
unsuccessful in life."

"What was his profession, what did he do?"

"He had been a sailor, I think," said the academic philanthropist; "but
when I knew him he had left the sea, and was, in fact, as far as he was
anything, a professional tattooer."

"What's that?"

"He tattooed patterns on sailors and people of that class for a
livelihood."

Bielby sat perfectly silent for a few minutes, and no one who saw him
could doubt that his silence arose from a conscious want of words on a
level with the situation.

"Has Miss--h'm, Spears--Shields? thank you; has she been an orphan
long?" he asked, at length. He was clearly trying to hope that the most
undesirable prospective father-in-law described by Maitland had long
been removed from the opportunity of forming his daughter's character.

"I only heard of his death yesterday," said Maitland.

"Was it sudden?"

"Why, yes. The fact is, he was a man of rather irregular habits, and he
was discovered dead in one of the carts belonging to the Vestry of St
George's, Hanover Square."

"St. George's, Hanover Square, indeed!" said the don, and once more he
relapsed, after a long whistle, into a significant silence. "Maitland,"
he said at last, "how did you come to be acquainted with these people?
The father, as I understand, was a kind of artist; but you can't,
surely, have met them in society?"

"He came a good deal to 'my public-house, the _Hit or Miss_. I think
I told you about it, sir, and you rather seemed to approve of it. The
tavern in Chelsea, if you remember, where I was trying to do something
for the riverside population, and to mix with them for their good, you
know."

"Good-night!" growled Bielby, very abruptly, and with considerable
determination in his tone. "I am rather busy this evening. I thin