tt, who would be found in the dark very busy with his pamphlet.

"I wish, my love, I could get somebody to play piquet with me," Miss
Crawley said one night when this functionary made his appearance with
the candles and the coffee. "Poor Briggs can no more play than an owl,
she is so stupid" (the spinster always took an opportunity of abusing
Briggs before the servants); "and I think I should sleep better if I
had my game."

At this Lady Jane blushed to the tips of her little ears, and down to
the ends of her pretty fingers; and when Mr. Bowls had quitted the
room, and the door was quite shut, she said:

"Miss Crawley, I can play a little. I used to--to play a little with
poor dear papa."

"Come and kiss me. Come and kiss me this instant, you dear good little
soul," cried Miss Crawley in an ecstasy: and in this picturesque and
friendly occupation Mr. Pitt found the old lady and the young one, when
he came upstairs with him pamphlet in his hand. How she did blush all
the evening, that poor Lady Jane!

It must not be imagined that Mr. Pitt Crawley's artifices escaped the
attention of his dear relations at the Rectory at Queen's Crawley.
Hampshire and Sussex lie very close together, and Mrs. Bute had friends
in the latter county who took care to inform her of all, and a great
deal more than all, that passed at Miss Crawley's house at Brighton.
Pitt was there more and more. He did not come for months together to
the Hall, where his abominable old father abandoned himself completely
to rum-and-water, and the odious society of the Horrocks family. Pitt's
success rendered the Rector's family furious, and Mrs. Bute regretted
more (though she confessed less) than ever her monstrous fault in so
insulting Miss Briggs, and in being so haughty and parsimonious to
Bowls and Firkin, that she had not a single person left in Miss
Crawley's household to give her information of what took place there.
"It was all Bute's collar-bone," she persisted in saying; "if that had
not broke, I never would have left her. I am a martyr to duty and to
your odious unclerical habit of hunting, Bute."

"Hunting; nonsense! It was you that frightened her, Barbara," the
divine interposed. "You're a clever woman, but you've got a devil of a
temper; and you're a screw with your money, Barbara."

"You'd have been screwed in gaol, Bute, if I had not kept your money."

"I know I would, my dear," said the Rector, good-naturedly. "You ARE a
clever wo