. Tarrant
still led an active life, and talked with great volubility, chiefly of
herself; Nancy learnt from her that she had been married at seventeen,
and had had two children, a son and a daughter, both deceased; of
relatives there remained to her only Mr Vawdrey and his family, and a
grandson, Lionel Tarrant.

One evening, as Jessica returned from a ramble with the children,
they encountered a young man who was greeted, without much fervour,
as 'cousin Lionel.' Mr. Tarrant professed himself merely a passing
visitant; he had come to inquire after the health of his grandmother,
and in a day or two must keep an appointment with friends elsewhere.
Notwithstanding this announcement, he remained at Teignmouth for a
fortnight, exhibiting a pious assiduity in his attendance upon the old
lady. Naturally, he made acquaintance with Miss. Lord, whom his cousins
regarded as a great acquisition, so vivacious was she, so ready to take
part in any kind of lively amusement. Mr. Tarrant had been at Oxford;
his speech was marked with the University accent; he talked little, and
seemed to prefer his own society. In conversation with Nancy, though
scrupulously courteous and perfectly good-natured, he never forgot that
she was the friend of his cousins' governess, that their intercourse
must be viewed as an irregular sort of thing, and that it behoved him
to support his dignity whilst condescending to a social inferior. So, at
all events, it struck Miss. Lord, very sensitive in such matters. Fond
of fitting people with nicknames, she called this young man sometimes
'His Royal Highness,' sometimes 'His Majesty.'

Of Mr. Tarrant's station in life nothing was discovered. His
grandmother, though seemingly in possession of ample means, betrayed
an indifferent education, and in her flow of gossip never referred to
ancestral dignities, never made mention of the calling her husband had
pursued. Mr. Vawdrey was known to be 'in business,'--a business which
must be tolerably lucrative.

On their return to London, the children passed from Miss. Morgan's care
into that of Mrs. Baker, who kept house for the widower at Champion
Hill; but Jessica did not wholly lose sight of them, and, at their
request, she persuaded Nancy Lord to make an occasional call with her.
Mrs. Baker (relict, it was understood, of a military officer who
had fallen in Eastern warfare) behaved to the young ladies with much
friendliness. They did not meet Mr. Vawdrey.

Early in