hair, and never needed to ask what they were
about. Ah, he was a fellow! none of your girl-faced mudgers, who make
love to ladies, forsooth,--a pretty woman need not look far for a kiss
when he was in the room, I warrant, however coarse her duds might be;
and lauk! but the captain was a sensible man, and liked a cow as well as
a calf."

"So, so! on the road, are they?" cried Clifford, musingly, and without
heeding the insinuated attack on his decorum. "But answer me, what is
the plan? Be quick!"

"Why," replied the dame, "there's some swell cove of a lord gives a
blow-out to-day; and the lads, dear souls! think to play the queer on
some straggler."

Without uttering a word, Clifford darted from the house, and was
remounted before the old lady had time to recover her surprise.

"If you want to see them," cried she, as he put spurs to his horse,
"they ordered me to have supper ready at------" The horse's hoofs
drowned the last words of the dame; and carefully rebolting the door,
and muttering an invidious comparison between Captain Clifford and
Captain Gloak, the good landlady returned to those culinary operations
destined to rejoice the hearts of Tomlinson and Pepper.

Return we ourselves to Lucy. It so happened that the squire's carriage
was the last to arrive; for the coachman, long uninitiated among the
shades of Warlock into the dissipation of fashionable life, entered on
his debut at Bath, with all the vigorous heat of matured passions for
the first time released, into the festivities of the ale-house,
and having a milder master than most of his comrades, the fear of
displeasure was less strong in his aurigal bosom than the love of
companionship; so that during the time this gentleman was amusing
himself, Lucy had ample leisure for enjoying all the thousand-and-one
reports of the scene between Mauleverer and Clifford which regaled
her ears. Nevertheless, whatever might have been her feelings at these
pleasing recitals, a certain vague joy predominated over all. A man
feels but slight comparative happiness in being loved, if he know that
it is in vain; but to a woman that simple knowledge is sufficient to
destroy the memory of a thousand distresses, and it is not till she has
told her heart again and again that she is loved, that she will even
begin to ask if it be in vain.

It was a partially starlight yet a dim and obscure night, for the moon
had for the last hour or two been surrounded by mist and cloud, w