At the time that the murder was attempted Lord Lovel was in London,—and had seen Daniel Thwaite on that morning; but before any confirmed rumour had reached his ears he had left London again on his road to Yoxham. He knew now that he would be endowed with something like ten thousand a year out of the wealth of the late Earl, but that he would not have the hand of his fair cousin, the late Earl\'s daughter. Perhaps it was as well as it was. The girl had never loved him, and he could now choose for himself;—and need not choose till it should be his pleasure to settle himself as a married man. After all, his marriage with Lady Anna would have been a constrained marriage,—a marriage which he would have accepted as the means of making his fortune. The girl certainly had pleased him;—but it might be that a girl who preferred a tailor would not have continued to please him. At any rate he could not be unhappy with his newly-acquired fortune, and he went down to Yoxham to receive the congratulation of his friends, thinking that it would become him now to make some exertion towards reconciling his uncle and aunt to the coming marriage.

"Have you heard anything about Mr. Thwaite?" Mr. Flick said to him the day before he started. The Earl had heard nothing. "They say that he has been wounded by a pistol-ball." Lord Lovel stayed some days at a friend\'s house on his road into Yorkshire, and when he reached the rectory, the rector had received news from London. Mr. Thwaite the tailor had been murdered, and it was surmised that the deed had been done by the Countess. "I trust the papers were signed before you left London," said the anxious rector. The documents making over the property were all right, but the Earl would believe nothing of the murder. Mr. Thwaite might have been wounded. He had heard so much before,—but he was quite sure that it had not been done by the Countess. On the following day further tidings came. Mr. Thwaite was doing well, but everybody said that the attempt had been made by Lady Lovel. Thus by degrees some idea of the facts as they had occurred was received at the rectory.

"You don\'t mean that you want us to have Mr. Thwaite here?" said the rector, holding up his hands, upon hearing a proposition made to him by his nephew a day or two later.

"Why not, uncle Charles?"

"I couldn\'t do it. I really don\'t think your aunt could bring herself to sit down to table with him."

"Aunt Jane?"

"Yes, your aunt Jane,—or your aunt Julia either." Now a quieter lady than aunt Jane, or one less likely to turn up her nose at any guest whom her husband should choose to entertain, did not exist.

"May I ask my aunts?"

"What good can it do, Frederic?"

"He\'s going to marry our cousin. He\'s not at all such a man as you seem to think."

"He has been a journeyman tailor all his life."

"You\'ll find he\'ll make a very good sort of gentleman. Sir William Patterson says that he\'ll be in Parliament before long."

"Sir William! Sir William is always meddling. I have never thought much about Sir William."

"Come, uncle Charles,—you should be fair. If we had gone on quarrelling and going to law, where should I have been now? I should never have got a shilling out of the property. Everybody says so. No doubt Sir William acted very wisely."

"I am no lawyer. I can\'t say how it might have been. But I may have my doubts if I like. I have always understood that Lady Lovel, as you choose to call her, was never Lord Lovel\'s wife. For twenty years I have been sure of it, and I can\'t change so quickly as some other people."

"She is Lady Lovel now. The King and Queen would receive her as such if she went to Court. Her daughter is Lady Anna Lovel."

"It may be so. It is possible."

"If it be not so," said the young lord thumping the table, "where have I got the money from?" This was an argument that the rector could not answer;—so he merely shook his head. "I am bound to acknowledge them after taking her money."

"But not him. You haven\'t had any of his money. You needn\'t acknowledge him."

"We had better make the best of it, uncle Charles. He is going to marry our cousin, and we should stand by her. Sir William very strongly advises me to be present at the marriage, and to offer to give her away."

"The girl you were going to marry yourself!"

"Or else that you should do it. That of course would be better."

The rector of Yoxham groaned when the proposition was made to him. What infinite vexation of spirit and degradation had come to him from these spurious Lovels during the last twelve months! He had been made to have the girl in his house and to give her precedence as Lady Anna, though he did not believe in her; he had been constrained to treat her as the desired bride of his august nephew the Earl,—till she had refused the Earl\'s hand; after he had again repudiated her and her mother because of her base attachment to a low-born artisan, he had been made to re-accept her in spirit, because she had been generous to his nephew;—and now he was asked to stand at the altar and give her away to the tailor! And there could come to him neither pleasure nor profit from the concern. All that he had endured he had borne simply for the sake of his family and his nephew. "She is degrading us all,—as far as she belongs to us," said the rector. "I can\'t see why I should be asked to give her my countenance in doing it."

"Everybody says that it is very good of her to be true to the man she loved when she was poor and in obscurity. Sir William says—"

"—— Sir William!" muttered the rector between his teeth, as he turned away in disgust. What had been the first word of that minatory speech Lord Lovel did not clearly hear. He had been brought up as a boy by his uncle, and had never known his uncle to offend by swearing. No one in Yoxham would have believed it possible that the parson of the parish should have done so. Mrs. Grimes would have given evidence in any court in Yorkshire that it was absolutely impossible. The archbishop would not have believed it though his archdeacon had himself heard the word. All the man\'s known antecedents since he had been at Yoxham were against the probability. The entire close at York would have been indignant had such an accusation been made. But his nephew in his heart of hearts believed that the rector of Yoxham had damned the Solicitor-General.

There was, however, more cause for malediction, and further provocations to wrath, in store for the rector. The Earl had not as yet opened all his budget, or let his uncle know the extent of the sacrifice that was to be demanded from him. Sir William had been very urgent with the young nobleman to accord everything that could be accorded to his cousin. "It is not of course for me to dictate," he had said............