and Mr. Aubrey paid her the Christmas-day
visit, which has been described.

CHAPTER XI.

The reader has had, already, pretty distinct indications of the manner
in which Titmouse and Snap conducted themselves during their stay in
Yorkshire; and which, I fear, have not tended to raise either of these
gentlemen in the reader's estimation. Titmouse manifested a very natural
anxiety to see the present occupants of Yatton; and it was with infinite
difficulty that Snap could prevent him from sneaking about in the
immediate neighborhood of the Hall, with the hope of seeing them. His
first encounter with Mr. and Miss Aubrey was entirely accidental, as the
reader may remember; and when he found that the lady on horseback near
Yatton, and the lady whom he had striven to attract the notice of in
Hyde Park, were one and the same beautiful woman, and that that
beautiful woman was neither more nor less than the sister of the present
owner of Yatton--the marvellous discovery created a mighty pother in his
little feelings. The blaze of Kate Aubrey's beauty in an instant
consumed the images both of Tabitha Tag-rag and Dora Quirk. It even for
a while outshone the splendors of ten thousand a-year: such is the
inexpressible and incalculable power of woman's beauty over everything
in the shape of man--over even so despicable a sample of him, as
Tittlebat Titmouse.

While putting in practice some of those abominable tricks to which,
under Snap's tutelage, Titmouse had become accustomed in walking the
streets of London, and from which even the rough handling they had got
from farmer Hazel could not turn him, Titmouse at length, as has been
seen, most unwittingly fell foul of that fair creature, Catherine Aubrey
herself; who seemed truly like an angelic messenger, returning from her
errand of sympathy and mercy, and suddenly beset by a little imp of
darkness. When Titmouse discovered who was the object of his audacious
and revolting advances, his soul (such as it was) seemed petrified
within him; and it was fortunate that the shriek of Miss Aubrey's
attendant at length startled him into a recollection of a pair of heels,
to which he was that evening indebted for an escape from a most
murderous cudgelling, which might have been attended with one effect not
contemplated by him who inflicted it, (so profoundly in the dark are we
as to the causes and consequences of human actions;) viz. the retention
of the Aubreys in the possession of Y