Some score pages back, when we were all assembled at the King’s House, my reader, perhaps, may not have missed our fat and consequential, but on the whole, good-natured acquaintance, Mrs. Macnamara; though, now I remember, he did overhear the gentle Magnolia, in that little colloquy in which she and Aunt Becky exchanged compliments, say, in substance, that she hoped that amiable parent might be better next day. She was not there, she was not well. Of late Mrs. Macnamara had lost all her pluck, and half her colour, and some even of her fat. She was like one of those portly dowagers in Numbernip’s select society of metamorphosed turnips, who suddenly exhibited sympathetic symptoms of failure, grew yellow, flabby, and wrinkled, as the parent bulb withered and went out of season. You would not have known her for the same woman.

A tall, pale female, dressed in black satin and a black velvet riding hood, had made her two visits in a hackney-coach; but whether these had any connexion with the melancholy change referred to, I don’t, at this moment, say. I know that they had a very serious bearing upon after events affecting persons who figure in this true history. Whatever her grief was she could not bring herself to tell it. And so her damask cheek, and portly form, and rollicking animal spirits continued to suffer.

The major found that her mind wandered at piquet. Toole also caught her thinking of something else in the midst of his best bits of local scandal; and Magnolia several times popped in upon her large mother in tears. Once or twice Toole thought, and he was right, that she was on the point of making a disclosure. But her heart failed her, and it came to nothing. The little fellow’s curiosity was on fire. In his philosophy there was more in everything than met the eye, and he would not believe Magnolia, who laughed at him, that she did not know all about it.

On this present morning poor Mrs. Macnamara had received a note, at which she grew pale as the large pat of butter before her, and she felt quite sick as she thrust the paper into her pocket, and tried to smile across the breakfast table at Magnolia, who was rattling away as usual, and the old major who was chuckling at her impudent mischief over his buttered toast and tea.

‘Why, mother dear,’ cried Mag suddenly, ‘what the plague ails your pretty face? Did you ever see the like? It’s for all the world like a bad batter pudding! I lay a crown, now, that was a bill. Was it a bill? Come now, Mullikins (a term of endearment for mother). Show us the note. It is too bad, you poor dear, old, handsome, bothered angel, you should be fretted and tormented out of your looks and your health, by them dirty shopkeepers’ bills, when a five-pound note, I’m certain sure, ‘id pay every mothers skin o’ them, and change to spare!’ And the elegant Magnolia, whose soiclainet and Norwich crape petticoat were unpaid for, darted a glance of reproach full upon the major’s powdered head, the top of which was cleverly presented to receive it, as he swallowed in haste his cup of tea, and rising suddenly, for his purse had lately suffered in the service of the ladies, and wanted rest —

’Tis nothing at all but that confounded egg,’ he said, raising that untasted delicacy a little towards his nose. ‘Why the divil will you go on buying our eggs from that dirty old sinner, Poll Delany?’ And he dropped it from its cup plump into the slop-basin.

‘A then maybe it was,’ said poor Mrs. Mac, smiling as well as she could; ‘but I’m better.’

‘No you’re not, Mullikins,’ interposed Magnolia impatiently. ‘There’s Toole crossing the street, will I call him up?’

‘Not for the world, Maggy darling. I’d have to pay him, and where’s the money to come from?’

The major did not hear, and was coughing besides; and recollecting that he had a word for the adjutant’s ear, took his sword off the peg where it hung, and his cocked hat, and vanished in a twinkling.

‘Pay Toole, indeed! nonsense, mother,’ and up went the window.

‘Good-morrow to your nightcap, doctor!’

‘And the top of the morning to you, my pretty Miss chattering Mag, up on your perch there,’ responded the physician.

‘And what in the world brings you out this way at breakfast time, and where are you going?— Oh! goosey, goosey gander, where do you wander?’

‘Up stairs, if you let me,’ said Toole, with a flourish of his hand, and a gallant grin, ‘and to my lady’s chamber.’

‘And did you hear the news?’ demanded Miss Mag.

The doctor glanced over his shoulder, and seeing the coast clear, he was by this time close under the little scarlet geranium pots that stood on the window-sill.

‘Miss Chattesworth, eh?’ he asked, in a sly, low tone.

‘Oh, bother her, no. Do you remember Miss Anne Marjoribanks, that lodged in Doyle’s house, down there, near the mills, last summer, with her mother, the fat woman with the poodle, and the — don’t you know?’

‘Ay, ay; she wore a flowered silk tabby sacque, on band days,’ said Toole, who had an eye and a corner in his memory for female costume, ‘a fine showy — I remember.’ ‘Well, middling: that’s she.’

‘And what of her?’ asked Toole, screwing himself up as close as he could to the flower-pots.

‘Come up and I’ll tell you,’ and she shut down the window and beckoned him slily, and up came Toole all alive.

Miss Magnolia told her story in her usual animated way, sometimes dropping her voice to a whisper, and taking Toole by the collar, sometimes rising to a rollicking roar of laughter, while the little doctor stood by, his hands in his breeches’ pockets, making a pleasant jingle with his loose change there, with open mouth and staring eyes, and a sort of breathless grin all over his ruddy face. Then came another story, and more chuckling.

‘And what about that lanky long may-pole, Gerty Chattesworth, the witch?— not that anyone cares tuppence if she rode on a broom to sweep the cobwebs off the moon, only a body may as well know, you know,’ said Miss Mag, preparing to listen.

‘Why, by Jupiter! they say — but d’ye mind, I don’t know, and faith I don’t believe it — but they do say she’s going to be married to — who do you think now?’ answered Toole.

‘Old Colonel Bligh, of the Magazine, or Dr. Walsingham, may be,’ cried Mag, with a burst of laughter; ‘no young fellow would be plagued with her, I’m certain.’

‘Well, ha, ha! you are a conjuror, Miss Mag, to be sure. He’s not young — you’re right there — but then, he’s rich, he is, by Jove! there’s no end of his — well, what do you say now to Mr. Dangerfield?’

‘Dangerfield! Well’ (after a little pause), ‘he’s ugly enough and old enough too, for the matter of that; but he’s as rich as a pork-pie; and if he’s worth half what they say, you may take my word for it, when he............