s--first-rate. Slap-up
shop, high profits and no mistake. But Lord! Sarah would have known
nothing about it--a dashing young lady she was--fine
boarding-school--fit for a lord's wife--only Archie Duncan threw it at
her out of spite, because she would have nothing to do with him. And
so she ran away from the whole concern. I travelled for 'em, sir, in a
gentlemanly way--at a high salary. They didn't mind her running away
at first--godly folks, sir, very godly--and she was for the stage. The
son was alive then, and the daughter was at a discount. Hallo! here we
are at the Blue Bull. What do you say, Mr. Ladislaw?--shall we turn in
and have a glass?"

"No, I must say good evening," said Will, dashing up a passage which
led into Lowick Gate, and almost running to get out of Raffles's reach.

He walked a long while on the Lowick road away from the town, glad of
the starlit darkness when it came. He felt as if he had had dirt cast
on him amidst shouts of scorn. There was this to confirm the fellow's
statement--that his mother never would tell him the reason why she had
run away from her family.

Well! what was he, Will Ladislaw, the worse, supposing the truth about
that family to be the ugliest? His mother had braved hardship in order
to separate herself from it. But if Dorothea's friends had known this
story--if the Chettams had known it--they would have had a fine color
to give their suspicions a welcome ground for thinking him unfit to
come near her. However, let them suspect what they pleased, they would
find themselves in the wrong. They would find out that the blood in
his veins was as free from the taint of meanness as theirs.

CHAPTER LXI.

"Inconsistencies," answered Imlac, "cannot both be right,
but imputed to man they may both be true."--Rasselas.

The same night, when Mr. Bulstrode returned from a journey to Brassing
on business, his good wife met him in the entrance-hall and drew him
into his private sitting-room.

"Nicholas," she said, fixing her honest eyes upon him anxiously, "there
has been such a disagreeable man here asking for you--it has made me
quite uncomfortable."

"What kind of man, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, dreadfully certain of
the answer.

"A red-faced man with large whiskers, and most impudent in his manner.
He declared he was an old friend of yours, and said you would be sorry
not to see him. He wanted to wait for you here, but I told him he
could see