charities. I should have doubted, until now, if Captain James knew him."

"Indeed, my lady, he not only knows him, but is intimate with him, I
regret to say. I have repeatedly seen the captain and Mr. Brooke walking
together; going through the fields together; and people do say--"

My lady looked up in interrogation at Mr. Gray's pause.

"I disapprove of gossip, and it may be untrue; but people do say that
Captain James is very attentive to Miss Brooke."

"Impossible!" said my lady, indignantly. "Captain James is a loyal and
religious man. I beg your pardon Mr. Gray, but it is impossible."

CHAPTER XIV.

Like many other things which have been declared to be impossible, this
report of Captain James being attentive to Miss Brooke turned out to be
very true.

The mere idea of her agent being on the slightest possible terms of
acquaintance with the Dissenter, the tradesman, the Birmingham democrat,
who had come to settle in our good, orthodox, aristocratic, and
agricultural Hanbury, made my lady very uneasy. Miss Galindo's
misdemeanour in having taken Miss Bessy to live with her, faded into a
mistake, a mere error of judgment, in comparison with Captain James's
intimacy at Yeast House, as the Brookes called their ugly square-built
farm. My lady talked herself quite into complacency with Miss Galindo,
and even Miss Bessy was named by her, the first time I had ever been
aware that my lady recognized her existence; but--I recollect it was a
long rainy afternoon, and I sat with her ladyship, and we had time and
opportunity for a long uninterrupted talk--whenever we had been silent
for a little while she began again, with something like a wonder how it
was that Captain James could ever have commenced an acquaintance with
"that man Brooke." My lady recapitulated all the times she could
remember, that anything had occurred, or been said by Captain James which
she could now understand as throwing light upon the subject.

"He said once that he was anxious to bring in the Norfolk system of
cropping, and spoke a good deal about Mr. Coke of Holkham (who, by the
way, was no more a Coke than I am--collateral in the female line--which
counts for little or nothing among the great old commoners' families of
pure blood), and his new ways of cultivation; of course new men bring in
new ways, but it does not follow that either are better than the old
ways. However, Captain James has been very anxious to try turnips and