house. Pretty
gals, bless ye, need no introduction yonder; and yet one would have
thought that Squire would know better than to meddle with the
mischievous hussies--he took his lesson early enough, at all events.
Why, he married before he was your age, and not half so much of a man to
look at, neither. You have heard talk of that, I dare say, however, in
London?"

Richard Yorke, as the keeper had hinted, was a very handsome
lad--brown-cheeked, blue eyed, and with rich clustering hair as black as
a sloe; but at this moment he did not look prepossessing. He frowned and
flashed a furious glance upon the speaker; but old Grange, who had an
eye like a hawk, for the objects that a hawk desires, was as blind as a
mole to any evidence of human emotion short of a punch on the head, and
went on unheeding:

"Well, I thought you must ha' heard o' that too. We folk down here heard
o' nothing else for all that year. She got hold o' Squire, this ere
woman did, though he was but a school-boy, and she old enough to be his
mother, bless ye, and was married to him. And they kep' it secret for
six months; and that's what bangs me most about it all. For Carew, he
can keep nothing secret--nothing: he blurts all out; and that's why he
seems so much worse than he is to some people. Oh, she must have been a
deep one, she must!"

"You never saw her, then?" asked Yorke, carelessly shading his eyes, as
though from the westering sun, which Midas-like, was turning every thing
it touched in that broad landscape into gold.

"Oh yes, I see her; she was here with Squire near half a year. Mrs.
Carew--the old lady, I mean--was at Crompton then; and the young
one--though she was no chicken neither--she tried to get her turned out;
but she wasn't clever enough, clever as she was, for that job. Carew
loved his mother, as indeed he ought, for she had never denied him any
thing since he was born; and so, in that pitched battle between the
women, he took his mother's side. And in the end the old lady took his,
and with a vengeance. I do think that if it had not been for her, young
madam would have held on--Why, what's the matter, young gentleman? That
was an oath fit for the mouth of Squire hisself."

"It's this cursed toothache," exclaimed Yorke, passionately. "It has
worried me so ever since you began to speak that I should have gone mad
if I had not let out at it a bit. Never mind me; I'm better now."

"Well, that's like the Squire again," returned t