Charlotte
knows all the world and his wife. And if I'm there, and Miss Leyburn
will let me make friends with her, why, you know, _I_ can just protect
her a little from Aunt Charlotte!'

The little laughing face bent forward again; Robert, smiling, raised his
hat, and the ponies whirled her off. In anybody else Elsmere would have
thought all this effusion insincere or patronising. But Lady Helen was
the most spontaneous of mortals, and the only high-born woman he had
ever met who was really, and not only apparently, free from the
'nonsense of rank.' Robert shrewdly suspected Lady Charlotte's social
tolerance to be a mere varnish. But this little person, and her
favourite brother Hugh, to judge from the accounts of him, must always
have found life too romantic, too wildly and delightfully interesting
from top to bottom, to be measured by any but romantic standards.

Next day Sir Harry Varley, a great burly country squire, who adored his
wife, kept the hounds, owned a model estate, and thanked God every
morning that he was an Englishman, rode over to Mile End. Robert, who
had just been round the place with the inspector and was dead tired, had
only energy to show him a few of the worst enormities. Sir Harry,
leaving a cheque behind him, rode off with a discharge of strong
language, at which Robert, clergyman as he was, only grimly smiled.

A few days later Mr. Wendover's crimes as a landowner, his agent's
brutality, young Elsmere's devotion, and the horrors of the Mile End
outbreak, were in everybody's mouths. The county was roused. The Radical
newspaper came out on the Saturday with a flaming article; Robert, much
to his annoyance, found himself the local hero; and money began to come
in to him freely.

On the Monday morning Henslowe appeared on the scene with an army of
workmen. A racy communication from the inspector had reached him two
days before, so had a copy of the _Churton Advertiser_. He had spent
Sunday in a drinking bout, turning over all possible plans of vengeance
and evasion. Towards the evening, however, his wife, a gaunt clever
Scotchwoman, who saw ruin before them, and had on occasion an even
sharper tongue than her husband, managed to capture the supplies of
brandy in the house and effectually conceal them. Then she waited for
the moment of collapse which came on towards morning, and with her hands
on her hips she poured into him a volley of home-truths which not even
Sir Harry Varley could have bett