sue
from the neckcloth of Sir Bingo, but they were not much attended to; for
it had not escaped the observation of the quicksighted gentry at the
Well, that the Baronet's feelings towards the noble Earl were in the
inverse ratio of those displayed by Lady Binks, and that, though ashamed
to testify, or perhaps incapable of feeling, any anxious degree of
jealousy, his temper had been for some time considerably upon the fret;
a circumstance concerning which his fair moiety did not think it
necessary to give herself any concern.

Meanwhile, the Earl of Etherington walked onward with his confidant, in
the full triumph of successful genius.

"You see," he said, "Jekyl, that I can turn a corner with any man in
England. It was a proper blunder of yours, that you must extricate the
fellow from the mist which accident had flung around him--you might as
well have published the story of our rencontre at once, for every one
can guess it, by laying time, place, and circumstance together; but
never trouble your brains for a justification. You marked how I assumed
my natural superiority over him--towered up in the full pride of
legitimacy--silenced him even where the good company most do congregate.
This will go to Mowbray through his agent, and will put him still madder
on my alliance. I know he looks jealously on my flirtation with a
certain lady--the dasher yonder--nothing makes a man sensible of the
value of an opportunity, but the chance of losing it."

"I wish to Heaven you would give up thoughts of Miss Mowbray!" said
Jekyl; "and take Tyrrel's offer, if he has the means of making it good."

"Ay, if--if. But I am quite sure he has no such rights as he pretends
to, and that his papers are all a deception.--Why do you put your eye
upon me as fixed as if you were searching out some wonderful secret?"

"I wish I knew what to think of your real _bona fide_ belief respecting
these documents," said Jekyl, not a little puzzled by the steady and
unembarrassed air of his friend.

"Why, thou most suspicious of coxcombs," said Etherington, "what the
devil would you have me say to you?--Can I, as the lawyers say, prove a
negative? or, is it not very possible, that such things may exist,
though I have never seen or heard of them? All I can say is, that of all
men I am the most interested to deny the existence of such documents;
and, therefore, certainly will not admit of it, unless I am compelled to
do so by their being produced; nor the