armaduke, rubbing the tears
away from his eyes with his red silk pocket-handkerchief.

"I will acknowledge that those letters,--there may have been one or
two,--were the beginning of the trouble. It was these that made this
man show himself to be a lunatic. I do admit that. I was bound not to
talk about your coming, and I told her to keep the secret. He went
spying about, and found her letters, I suppose,--and then he took
fire because there was to be a secret from him. Dirty, mean dog! And
now I'm to be told by such a fellow as Outhouse that it's my fault,
that I have caused all the trouble, because, when I happened to be in
Devonshire, I went to see your daughter!" We must do the Colonel the
justice of supposing that he had by this time quite taught himself to
believe that the church porch at Cockchaffington had been the motive
cause of his journey into Devonshire. "Upon my word it is too hard,"
continued he indignantly. "As for Outhouse,--only for the gown upon
his back, I'd pull his nose. And I wish that you would tell him that
I say so."

"There is trouble enough without that," said Sir Marmaduke.

"But it is hard. By G----, it is hard. There is this comfort;--if
it hadn't been me, it would have been some one else. Such a man as
that couldn't have gone two or three years, without being jealous of
some one. And as for poor Emily, she is better off perhaps with an
accusation so absurd as this, than she might have been had her name
been joined with a younger man, or with one whom you would have less
reason for trusting."

There was so much that seemed to be sensible in this, and it was
spoken with so well assumed a tone of injured innocence, that Sir
Marmaduke felt that he had nothing more to say. He muttered something
further about the cruelty of the case, and then slunk away out of the
club, and made his way home to the dull gloomy house in Manchester
Street. There was no comfort for him there;--but neither was there
any comfort for him at the club. And why did that vexatious Secretary
of State send him messages about blue books? As he went, he expressed
sundry wishes that he was back at the Mandarins, and told himself
that it would be well that he should remain there till he died.

CHAPTER LXV.

MYSTERIOUS AGENCIES.

[Illustration]

When the thirty-first of March arrived, Exeter had not as yet been
made gay with the marriage festivities of Mr. Gibson and Camilla
French. And this delay had not