ooh! pooh! his Excellency and his Lordship's all a humbug now, you
know--mere St. Germains titles--Earl of Beauchamp, and ambassador
plenipotentiary from France, when the Duke Regent of Orleans scarce knew
that he lived, I dare say. But you must have seen old Sir Frederick
Vernon at the Hall, when he played the part of Father Vaughan?"

"Good Heavens! then Vaughan was Miss Vernon's father?"

"To be sure he was," said the Justice coolly;--"there's no use in
keeping the secret now, for he must be out of the country by this
time--otherwise, no doubt, it would be my duty to apprehend him.--Come,
off with your bumper to my dear lost Die!

And let her health go round, around, around,
And let her health go round;
For though your stocking be of silk,
Your knees near kiss the ground, aground, aground."*

* This pithy verse occurs, it is believed, in Shadwell's play of Bury
Fair.

I was unable, as the reader may easily conceive, to join in the Justice's
jollity. My head swam with the shock I had received. "I never heard," I
said, "that Miss Vernon's father was living."

"It was not our Government's fault that he is," replied Inglewood, "for
the devil a man there is whose head would have brought more money. He was
condemned to death for Fenwick's plot, and was thought to have had some
hand in the Knightsbridge affair, in King William's time; and as he had
married in Scotland a relation of the house of Breadalbane, he possessed
great influence with all their chiefs. There was a talk of his being
demanded to be given up at the peace of Ryswick, but he shammed ill, and
his death was given publicly out in the French papers. But when he came
back here on the old score, we old cavaliers knew him well,--that is to
say, I knew him, not as being a cavalier myself, but no information being
lodged against the poor gentleman, and my memory being shortened by
frequent attacks of the gout, I could not have sworn to him, you know."

"Was he, then, not known at Osbaldistone Hall?" I inquired.

"To none but to his daughter, the old knight, and Rashleigh, who had got
at that secret as he did at every one else, and held it like a twisted
cord about poor Die's neck. I have seen her one hundred times she would
have spit at him, if it had not been fear for her father, whose life
would not have been worth five minutes' purchase if he had been
discovered to the Government.--B