a friend of
my poor nephew John Ravensbury.' He looked over his shoulder to see if
his daughter were within hearing, and, with the impulse of the solitary
to make a confidence, continued in a low tone: 'She, poor girl, was
to have married John: his death was a sad blow to her and to all of
us.--Pray take a seat, Mr. Somerset.'

The reverses of fortune which had brought Sir William De Stancy to
this comfortable cottage awakened in Somerset a warmer emotion than
curiosity, and he sat down with a heart as responsive to each speech
uttered as if it had seriously concerned himself, while his host gave
some words of information to his daughter on the trifling events that
had marked the morning just passed; such as that the cow had got out of
the paddock into Miss Power's field, that the smith who had promised
to come and look at the kitchen range had not arrived, that two wasps'
nests had been discovered in the garden bank, and that Nick Jones's baby
had fallen downstairs. Sir William had large cavernous arches to his
eye-sockets, reminding the beholder of the vaults in the castle he
once had owned. His hands were long and almost fleshless, each knuckle
showing like a bamboo-joint from beneath his coat-sleeves, which were
small at the elbow and large at the wrist. All the colour had gone from
his beard and locks, except in the case of a few isolated hairs of the
former, which retained dashes of their original shade at sudden points
in their length, revealing that all had once been raven black.

But to study a man to his face for long is a species of ill-nature which
requires a colder temperament, or at least an older heart, than the
architect's was at that time. Incurious unobservance is the true
attitude of cordiality, and Somerset blamed himself for having fallen
into an act of inspection even briefly. He would wait for his host's
conversation, which would doubtless be of the essence of historical
romance.

'The favourable Bank-returns have made the money-market much easier
to-day, as I learn?' said Sir William.

'O, have they?' said Somerset. 'Yes, I suppose they have.'

'And something is meant by this unusual quietness in Foreign stocks
since the late remarkable fluctuations,' insisted the old man. 'Is the
current of speculation quite arrested, or is it but a temporary lull?'

Somerset said he was afraid he could not give an opinion, and entered
very lamely into the subject; but Sir William seemed to find sufficient