e been poor nor honourable, though perhaps a right
honourable. However, with your grand education and genteel manners, you
made all right at last by persuading this noble young gentlewoman to run
away from boarding-school with you."

"I was never at a boarding-school," said Belle, "unless you call--"

"Ay, ay," said the postillion, "boarding-school is vulgar, I know: I beg
your pardon, I ought to have called it academy, or by some other much
finer name--you were in something much greater than a boarding-school."

"There you are right," said Belle, lifting up her head and looking the
postillion full in the face by the light of the charcoal fire; "for I was
bred in the workhouse."

"Wooh!" said the postillion.

"It is true that I am of good--"

"Ay, ay," said the postillion, "let us hear--"

"Of good blood," continued Belle; "my name is Berners, Isopel Berners,
though my parents were unfortunate. Indeed, with respect to blood, I
believe I am of better blood than the young man."

"There you are mistaken," said I; "by my father's side I am of Cornish
blood, and by my mother's of brave French Protestant extraction. Now,
with respect to the blood of my father--and to be descended well on the
father's side is the principal thing--it is the best blood in the world,
for the Cornish blood, as the proverb says--"

"I don't care what the proverb says," said Belle; "I say my blood is the
best--my name is Berners, Isopel Berners--it was my mother's name, and is
better, I am sure, than any you bear, whatever that may be; and though
you say that the descent on the father's side is the principal thing--and
I know why you say so," she added with some excitement--"I say that
descent on the mother's side is of most account, because the mother--"

"Just come from Gretna Green, and already quarrelling," said the
postillion.

"We do not come from Gretna Green," said Belle.

"Ah, I had forgot," said the postillion, "none but great people go to
Gretna Green. Well, then, from church, and already quarrelling about
family, just like two great people."

"We have never been to church," said Belle, "and, to prevent any more
guessing on your part, it will be as well for me to tell you, friend,
that I am nothing to the young man, and he, of course, nothing to me. I
am a poor travelling girl, born in a workhouse: journeying on my
occasions with certain companions, I came to this hollow, where my
company quarrelled with the young man,