tainly repaid to your
Lordship and your tenants, in the course of the next three years, by
the saving in poor-rates; an opinion for which I subjoin my grounds
drawn from the books of the medical officer, Mr. Heale: but the
responsibility and possible unpopularity, which employing so great
a sum would involve, is more than I can, in the present dependent
condition of poor-law medical officers, dare to undertake, in justice
to Mr. Heale my employer, save at your special command. I am bound,
however, to inform your lordship, that this outlay would, I think,
perfectly defend the hamlets, not only from that visit of the cholera
which we have every reason to expect next summer, but also from those
zymotic diseases which (as your lordship will see by my returns) make
up more than sixty-five per cent of the aggregate sickness of the
estate."

Which letter the old Cotton Lord put in his pocket, rode into Whitbury
therewith, and showed it to Mark Armsworth.

"Well, Mr. Armsworth, what am I to do?"

"Well, my Lord; I told you what sort of a man you'd have to do
with; one that does his work thoroughly, and, I think, pays you a
compliment, by thinking that you want it done thoroughly."

Lord Minchampstead was of the same opinion; but he did not say so.
Few, indeed, have ever heard Lord Minchampstead give his opinion:
though many a man has seen him act on it.

"I'll send down orders to my agent."

"Don't."

"Why, then, my good friend?"

"Agents are always in league with farmers, or guardians, or builders,
or drain-tile makers, or attorneys, or bankers, or somebody; and
either you'll be told that the work don't need doing; or have a job
brewed out of it, to get off a lot of unsaleable drain-tiles, or
cracked soil-pans; or to get farm ditches dug, and perhaps the highway
rates saved building culverts, and fifty dodges beside. I know their
game; and you ought, too, by now, my lord, begging your pardon."

"Perhaps I do, Mark," said his lordship with a chuckle.

"So, I say, let the man that found the fox, run the fox, and kill the
fox, and take the brush home."

"And so it shall be," quoth my Lord Minchampstead.

CHAPTER IX.

"AM I NOT A WOMAN AND A SISTER?"

But what was the mysterious bond between La Cordifiamma and the
American, which had prevented Scoutbush from following the example
of his illustrious progenitor, and taking a viscountess from off the
stage?

Certainly, any one who had seen her with him on