tion with
the affair. She had been in London at the time certainly, staying with
a friend, who was helping her in the choice of a new gown for the coming
autumn.

She returned to Acol Court with her brother-in-law, apparently as
horrified as he was at the disgrace which she vowed Richard Lambert had
heaped upon them all.

The story of the young man being caught in the very act of cheating at
cards lost nothing in the telling. He had been convicted before Judge
Parry of obtaining money by lying and other illicit means, had been
condemned to fine and imprisonment and as he refused to pay the
former--most obstinately declaring that he was penniless--he was made to
stand for two hours in the pillory, and was finally dragged through the
streets in a rickety cart in full sight of a jeering crowd, sitting with
his back to the nag in company of the public hangman, and attired in
shameful and humiliating clothes.

What happened to him after undergoing this wonderfully lenient
sentence--for many there were who thought he should have been publicly
whipped and branded as a cheat--nobody knew or cared.

They kept him in prison for over ten weeks, it seems, but Sir Marmaduke
did not know what had become of him since then.

The other gentlemen got off fairly lightly with fines and brief periods
of imprisonment. Young Segrave, so 'twas said, had been shipped to New
England by his father, but Master and Mistress Endicott had gone beyond
the seas at the expense of the State, and not for their own pleasure or
advancement. It appears that my Lord Protector's vigilance patrol had
kept a very sharp eye on these two people, who had more than once had to
answer for illicit acts before the Courts. They tried in a most shameful
manner it appears, to implicate Sir Marmaduke and Mistress de Chavasse
in their disgrace, but as the former very pertinently remarked, "How
could he, a simple Kentish squire have aught to do with a smart London
club? and people of such evil repute as the Endicotts could of a truth
never be believed."

All these rumors and accounts had, of course, also reached Sue's ears.
At first she took up an attitude of aggressive incredulity when her
former friend was accused: nothing but the plain facts as set forth in
the _Public Advertiser_ of August the 5th would convince her that
Richard Lambert could be so base and mean as Sir Marmaduke had averred.

Even then, in her innermost heart, a vague and indefinable instinct
ca