entering
the room, and throwing his hat carelessly on a table. "I had the
whole police at work to look you up, and only succeeded at last by the
half-hint that you were a great political offender, and Lord Palmerston
would never forgive the authorities if they concealed you."

"I declare," said Augustus, gravely, "I am much flattered by all the
trouble you have taken to blacken my character."

"Character! bless your heart, so long as you ain't a Frenchman, these
people don't care about your character. An English conspirator is the
most harmless of all creatures. Had you been a Pole or an Italian, the
prefet told me, he'd have known every act of your daily life."

"And so we shall have to leave this, now?" said Ellen, with some
vexation in her tone.

"Not a bit of it, if you don't dislike the surveillance they 'll bestow
on you; and it 'll be the very best protection against rogues and
pickpockets; and I'll go and say that you're not the man I suspected at
all."

"'Pray take no further trouble on our behalf, sir," said Bramleigh,
stiffly and haughtily.

"Which being interpreted means--make your visit as short as may be, and
go your way, Tom Cutbill; don't it?"

"I am not prepared to say, sir, that I have yet guessed the object of
your coming."

"If you go to that, I suspect I 'll be as much puzzled as yourself.
I came to see you because I heard you were in my neighborhood. I don't
think I had any other very pressing reason. I had to decamp from England
somewhat hurriedly, and I came over here to be, as they call it, 'out of
the way,' till this storm blows over."

"What storm? I 've heard nothing of a storm."

"You 've not heard that the Lisconnor scheme has blown up?--the great
Culduff Mining Company has exploded, and blown all the shareholders
sky-high?"

"Not a word of it."

"Why, there 's more writs after the promoters this morning than ever
there was scrip for paid-up capital. We 're all in for it--every man of
us."

"Was it a mere bubble, then,--a fraud?"

"I don't know what you call a bubble, or what you mean by a fraud. We
had all that constitutes a company: we had a scheme, and we had a lord.
t If an over-greedy public wants grandeur and gain besides, it must be
disappointed; as I told the general meeting, 'You don't expect profit as
well as the peerage, do you?'"

"You yourself told me there was coal."

"So there was. I am ready to maintain it still. Is n't that money,
Bramleigh?" said he,