different matter. So Tom knew not
what to say or do; and not knowing, determined to wait on Providence,
smartened himself as best he could, went up to the great house, and
found Miss Mary.

"I'll tell her. She will manage it somehow, if she is a woman; much more
if she is an angel, as my father says."

Mary looked very much shocked and grieved; answered hardly a word; but
said at last, "Come in, while I go and see my father." He came into the
smart drawing-room, which he could see was seldom used; for Mary lived
in her own room, her father in his counting-house, or in his "den." In
ten minutes she came down. Tom thought she had been crying.

"I have settled it. Poor unhappy man! We will talk of something more
pleasant. Tell me about your shipwreck, and that place,--Aberalva, is it
not? What a pretty name!"

Tom told her, wondering then, and wondering long afterwards, how she had
"settled it" with her father. She chatted on artlessly enough, till the
old man came in, and to dinner, in capital humour, without saying one
word of Elsley.

"How has the old lion been tamed?" thought Tom. "The two greatest
affronts you could offer him in old times were, to break an engagement,
and to despise his good cheer." He did not know what the quiet oil on
the waters of such a spirit as Mary's can effect.

The evening passed pleasantly enough till nine, in chatting over old
times, and listening to the history of every extraordinary trout and fox
which had been killed within twenty miles, when the footboy entered with
a somewhat scared face.

"Please, sir, is Mr. Vavasour here?"

"Here? Who wants him?"

"Mrs. Brown, sir, in Hemmelford Street. Says he lodges with her, and has
been to seek for him at Dr. Thurnall's."

"I think you had better go, Mr. Thurnall," said Mary, quietly.

"Indeed you had, boy. Bother poets, and the day they first began to
breed in Whitbury! Such an evening spoilt! Have a cup of coffee? No?
then a glass of sherry?"

Out went Tom. Mrs. Brown had been up, and seen him seemingly sleeping;
then had heard him run downstairs hurriedly. He passed her in the
passage, looking very wild. "Seemed, sir, just like my nevy's wife's
brother, Will Ford, before he made away with hes'self."

Tom goes off post haste, revolving many things in a crafty heart. Then
he steers for Bolus's shop. Bolus is at "The Angler's Arms;" but his
assistant is in.

"Did a gentleman call here just now, in a long cloak, with a felt
wid