have known her. She was no
longer fat and inane. Her figure had become slim and graceful; her face
had become expressive and remarkably pretty, and her manners were those
of a well-bred and self-possessed lady. Gildart felt that he could no
more have taken the liberties he had ventured on in former years than he
could have flown.

He soon became very chatty, however, and speedily began to question her
in regard to his father and mother, (who, she told him, were not at
home), and old friends.

"And what of my friend Kenneth Stuart?" said he.

"He is well, poor fellow," replied Miss Puff; "but he is in unhappy
circumstances just now."

Here she related the circumstances of the bank failure, and the evil
consequences that followed, and were still pending over Kenneth and many
of their other friends in Wreckumoft.

"That's a sad business," said Gildart; "but I don't see how it can be
mended. I fear me it is a case of `grin and bear it.' And your aunt,
Miss Puff, what of the adorable Miss Flouncer?"

"She is now Lady Doles."

"You _don't_ say so! Well, I had given Sir Richard credit for more
sense. How long is it since they married?"

"About two years."

"Is Sir Richard dead?"

"No, why should you think so?"

"Because if it had been me, I should have succumbed in three months.
It's an awful thing to think of being married to a she-griffin."

"She is my aunt, Mr Bingley," said Miss Puff.

"Ah, to be sure, forgive me. But now I must go and search for my
father. Adieu. Miss Puff--_au revoir_."

Gildart left the room with a strange sensation of emptiness in his
breast.

"Why, surely--it _cannot_ be that I--I--am in love with that girl, that
stupid, fat--but she's not stupid and not fat _now_. She's graceful and
intelligent and pretty--absolutely beautiful; why, botheration, I _am_
in love or insane, perhaps both!"

Thus soliloquising my son entered my study.

The last conversation that I shall record, took place between Mr Stuart
senior and Colonel Crusty. It occurred about two weeks after those
conversations that have just been narrated. The colonel had been
suddenly summoned to see his brother-in-law, "on his death-bed,"--so the
epistle that summoned him had been worded by Miss Peppy.

That dinner at which these two friends had enjoyed themselves so much
happened to disagree with Mr George Stuart, insomuch that he was thrown
into a bilious fever--turned as yellow as a guinea and as thin as