he baronet never saw him more.

"For shame, Pypp!" shouted after him the warm-hearted Siliphant; "I tell
you what it is, Vincent, you must let me give a toast:--'Grace and her
lover!' here, my man, your master allows you to take a glass of wine
with us; help your beauty too."

The toast was drank with high applause: and before Jonathan humbly led
away his pleased and blushing Grace, he took an opportunity of saying,

"If I may be bold enough to speak, kind gentlemen, I wish to thank you:
I oughtn't to be long, for I am nothing but your servant; let it be
enough to say my heart is full. And I'm in hopes it wouldn't be very
wrong in me, kind gentlemen, to propose;--'My noble master--honour and
happiness to him!'"

"Bravo! Jonathan, bravo-o-o-o!" there was a clatter of glasses;--and the
humble pair of lovers retreated under cover of the toast.

CHAPTER XLIII.

SIMON ALONE.

JENNINGS gathered himself up, from that Jew-of-Malta tumble
down the steps, less damaged by the fall than could have been imagined
possible; the fact being that his cat-like nature had stood him in good
stead--he had lighted on his feet; and nothing but a mighty dorsal
bruise bore witness to the prowess of a Jonathan.

But, if his body was comparatively sound, the inner man was bruised all
over: he crept back, and retreated to his room, in as broken and
despondent a frame of mind, as any could have wished to bless him
wherewithal. However, he still had one thing left to live for: his
hoard--that precious hoard within his iron box, and then--the crock of
gold. He took Sir John's threat about detaining, and so forth, as
merely future, and calculated on rendering it nugatory, by decamping
forthwith, chattels and all; but he little expected to find that the
idea had already been acted upon!

On that identical afternoon, when Simon had gone forth to insult Grace
Acton with his villanous proposals, Sir John, on returning from a ride,
had commanded his own seal to be placed on all Mr. Jennings's effects,
and the boxes to be forthwith removed to a place of safety: induced
thereto by innumerable proofs from every quarter that the bailiff had
been cheating him on a most liberal scale, and plundering his tenants
systematically. Therefore, when Jennings hastened to his chamber to
console himself for all things by looking at his gold, and counting out
a bag or two--it was gone, gone, irrevocably gone! safely stored away
for rigid scrutiny in the g