t again, Mr. Artist! You want to know her name,
don't you? What do you think of Smith?

Speaking as a lawyer, I consider report, in a general way, to be a fool
and a liar. But in this case report turned out to be something very
different. Mr. Frank told me he was really in love, and said upon his
honor (an absurd expression which young chaps of his age are always
using) he was determined to marry Smith, the governess--the sweet,
darling girl, as _he_ called her; but I'm not sentimental, and _I_ call
her Smith, the governess. Well, Mr. Frank's father, being as proud as
Lucifer, said "No," as to marrying the governess, when Mr. Frank wanted
him to say "Yes." He was a man of business, was old Gatliffe, and he
took the proper business course. He sent the governess away with a
first-rate character and a spanking present, and then he, looked about
him to get something for Mr. Frank to do. While he was looking about,
Mr. Frank bolted to London after the governess, who had nobody alive
belonging to her to go to but an aunt--her father's sister. The aunt
refuses to let Mr. Frank in without the squire's permission. Mr. Frank
writes to his father, and says he will marry the girl as soon as he is
of age, or shoot himself. Up to town comes the squire and his wife and
his daughter, and a lot of sentimentality, not in the slightest degree
material to the present statement, takes places among them; and the
upshot of it is that old Gatliffe is forced into withdrawing the word
No, and substituting the word Yes.

I don't believe he would ever have done it, though, but for one lucky
peculiarity in the case. The governess's father was a man of good
family--pretty nigh as good as Gatliffe's own. He had been in the army;
had sold out; set up as a wine-merchant--failed--died; ditto his wife,
as to the dying part of it. No relation, in fact, left for the squire
to make inquiries about but the father's sister--who had behaved, as
old Gatliffe said, like a thorough-bred gentlewoman in shutting the door
against Mr. Frank in the first instance. So, to cut the matter short,
things were at last made up pleasant enough. The time was fixed for the
wedding, and an announcement about it--Marriage in High Life and all
that--put into the county paper. There was a regular biography, besides,
of the governess's father, so as to stop people from talking--a great
flourish about his pedigree, and a long account of his services in
the army; but not a word, mind