compliments?
It's all nonsense about Jews not being in Parliament. It's not the
same as being mayors or churchwardens, or anything like that. I shall
vote for Mr. Hart; and, what's more, we shall put him in."

"And Mrs. Cornbury, if you have so much regard for Miss Rachel, you'd
better advise her to think no more of that young man. He's no good;
he's not indeed. If you ask, you'll find he's in debt everywhere."

"Swindler!" said Tappitt.

"I don't suppose it can be very bad with Miss Rachel yet, for she
only saw him about three times,--though she was so intimate with him
at our party."

Mrs. Butler Cornbury curtseyed and smiled, and got herself out of the
room. Mrs. Tappitt, as soon as she remembered herself, rang the bell,
and Mr. Tappitt, following her down to the hall door, went through
the pretence of putting her into her carriage.

"She's a nasty meddlesome woman," said Tappitt, as soon as he got
back to his wife.

"And how ever she can stand up and say all those things for that
girl, passes me!" said Mrs. Tappitt, holding up both her hands. "She
was flighty herself, when young; she was, no doubt; and now I suppose
she likes others to be the same. If that's what she calls manners, I
shouldn't like her to take my girls about."

"And him a gentleman!" said Tappitt. "If those are to be our
gentlemen I'd sooner have all the Jews out of Jerusalem. But they'll
find out their gentleman; they'll find him out! He'll rob that old
mother of his before he's done; you mark my words else." Comforting
himself with this hope he took himself back to his counting-house.

Mrs. Cornbury had smiled as she went, and had carried herself through
the whole interview without any sign of temper. Even when declaring
that she intended to take Rachel's part open-mouthed, she had spoken
in a half-drolling way which had divested her words of any tone of
offence. But when she got into her carriage, she was in truth very
angry. "I don't believe a word of it," she said to herself; "not a
word of it." That in which she professed to herself her own disbelief
was the general assertion that Rowan was a swindler, supported by the
particular assertion that he had left Baslehurst over head and ears
in debt. "I don't believe it." And she resolved that it should be her
business to find out whether the accusation were true or false. She
knew the ins and outs of Baslehurst life and Baslehurst doings with
tolerable accuracy, and was at any rate capabl