“Indeed, I perceive clearly that you will soon ruin me!” the Duke said, still laughing. “I don’t know what you deserve should be done to you!”

“Sir, you won’t send me back to Pa and Mr. Snape, will you?” Tom demanded anxiously.

“No, no, nothing short of transportation will do for you!” the Duke told him.

His mind relieved of its only dread, Tom grinned gratefully, and applied himself with his usual energy and appetite to his dinner.

When he had retired to bed, which, since he was, he said, unaccountably tired, he was induced to do at an early hour, the Duke committed his cousin’s letters to the flames, and sent the waiter to obtain for him paper, ink, pens, and wafers. These commodities having been brought, the fire made up, and the blinds drawn, he sat down to write two letters. The first of these was to Matthew, at Oxford, and did not occupy him long. He sealed it with one of the wafers, wrote the direction, and was just about to scrawl his name across one corner when he recollected himself, and reopened the letter to add a postscript. “I fear you will have to pay some sixpences for this history” he wrote, smiling to himself,—“but it would never do, you know, for me to frank this. I hope you will not grudge it!” He then affixed a fresh wafer to his missive, laid it aside and wrote upon a new sheet of paper:

                                                                  White Horse,

                                                                  Baldock.


My dear Gideon,

Here the letter came to a sudden halt, it having just occurred to the Duke that he would in all probability see his dear Gideon before a letter could reach him. However, after biting the end of his quill reflectively for a few minutes, he decided that since had had nothing to read, and did not wish to retire to bed, he would write to Gideon after all. The urge to confide some part at least of his amazing new experiences to Gideon was irresistible. Besides, a description of Tom’s race and its consequences would occupy several sheets, so that Gideon would be forced to disgorge large sums to the Post Office for the privilege of receiving a letter from his noble relative, and that would be a very proper revenge on him for having tried to horrify one smaller and younger than himself with a blood-curdling novel. The Duke gave a little chuckle, dipped his quill in the ink, and lost no time in explaining this to Gideon. After that he embarked on a humorous account of his stage-coach journey, and in the most high-flown terms he could summon to mind, assured his cousin that he had already slain a considerable dragon, in the shape of an out-and-out villain, whom he had tricked, outwitted, and left for dead in a haunt of thieves and desperate characters from which he himself was lucky to have escaped with his life. He could fancy how Gideon would grin when he read this, and grinned himself. “And if you should wonder, my dear Gideon,” he continued, “why I should put myself to the trouble of writing to inform you of this when I have the intention of returning to London tomorrow, I must further inform you that I have engaged myself as bearleader to a youth of tender years, whose fertile mind suggests to him such ways of amusing himself as seem likely to keep me too fully occupied during the coming week to have leisure to spare for a visit to your chambers.”

He then favoured his cousin with the whole story of the backward-race, told him that his circle of friends had been enlarged to include a tailor, a lady who kept a pastry-cook’s shop, a beadle, and three farmers, and was just about to end his letter when he remembered something else which Gideon must certainly be told about. “By the by,” he wrote, “if you never hear of me again, you will know that I have fled the country, taking with me the most beautiful creature I ever beheld in my life. Alas that the notice of my engagement must by now have appeared in the Gazette! I would I could describe my inamorata to you, but no words could do even faint justice to her loveliness. The heart left my bosom in one bound! Ever your most affectionate

                                                                  Adolphus.

He closed his letter, and directed it, reflecting that it would undoubtedly bring Gideon round to Sale House at the first opportunity. It was still quite early in the evening, and the rumble of voices in the tap-room came faintly to the Duke’s ears. He was just wondering whether or not to seek entertainment there when a knock fell on the door, and the waiter came in, and, bending a look upon him compound of curiosity and disapproval, informed him that there was a young person belowstairs who was desirous of seeing him. “Leastways,” he added, “I dunno who else it could be, for there ain’t no one else here like what she says you are, not in this house there ain’t.”

“A young person to see me?” echoed the Duke blankly. “You must be mistaken!” A sudden and unwelcome suspicion darted into his mind. He said: “Good God!” and changed colour.

The waiter observed his consternation with a certain satisfaction. “Ah!” he said. “And go away, which I told her to, she will not!”

“I’ll come!” the Duke said hastily, and went to the head of the stairs, and looked down into the lobby. Seated on a chair, a bandbox on her knees, and another at her feet, was Belinda, her enchanting face framed in a blue bonnet, and a pelisse buttoned up to her white throat. In front of her, and in an attitude of unmistakable hostility, stood Mrs. Appleby.

Some instinct warned the Duke that he beheld Trouble. A prudent man would at this point retire to his room, denying all knowledge of the fair visitor, and leave Mrs. Appleby to get rid of her, which, he judged, she would very soon do, if left undeterred. But the Duke had either too little prudence or too much chivalry to adopt this course; he went down the stairs.

Both ladies looked up quickly, one greeting him with a blinding smile, and the other with a stare of outraged virtue. “Oh, sir, please I had to come!” said Belinda.

“This young woman, sir,” said Mrs. Appleby grimly, “appears to have business with you, for all she cannot give you a name! And I will take leave to tell you, sir, that mine has always been a respectable house, and such goings-on I will not have!”

“Oh, hush, Mrs. Appleby!” begged the Duke. “I am acquainted with this lady!”

“Of that I make no doubt, sir!” retorted Mrs. Appleby.

The Duke sought wildly in his mind for an explanation likely to satisfy the landlady, and could hit upon only one. “She is Tom’s sister!” he said, devoutly hoping that Belinda would not deny it. “She has come in search of him, of course!”

Belinda, who seemed to have a mind very responsive to suggestion, nodded her head at this, and smiled at Mrs. Appleby.

“!” pronounced that lady. “Then perhaps you will have the goodness to tell me what your business is, miss?”

“To find Tom,” replied Belinda happily.

“I never heard such a tale, not in all my lifeI didn’t!” exclaimed Mrs. Appleby, outraged. “Why, you’re no more like him than I am! Sir, I’ll have you know—”

“And I have brought all my things with me, because I dare not go back, so if you please, sir, will you take care of me?” added Belinda, turning her melting gaze upon the Duke.

“Not in my house he will not!” declared Mrs. Appleby, without hesitation.

By this time a small audience, consisting of the waiter, the boots, the tapster, and two chambermaids had gathered in the lobby, and the Duke, acutely unhappy at finding himself the centre of so much curiosity, said: “Please step up to the parlour, Miss—Miss Mamble! And do you come up too, Mrs. Appleby! I will explain it to you in private!”

Belinda got up readily from the chair. The Duke took the bandboxes from her; and Mrs. Appleby, after demanding to know if her various servants could find nothing better to do than to stand there gaping, said that no amount of explanation would reconcile her to Belinda’s presence in the inn. But as Belinda and the Duke were by this time halfway up the stairs she was obliged to follow them, maintaining a threatening monologue all the way.

The Duke ushered Belinda into his parlour, set down the bandboxes, and firmly shut the door upon her. He turned to confront Mrs. Appleby.

That redoubtable lady at once broke into speech. If, she declared, Mr. Rufford had the least hope of her keeping that Hussy under her roof for as much as one hour he was sadly mistaken! To be sure, she might have guessed, after the events of this day, that something of the sort would happen, but boys’ mischief was one thing, and goings-on of this nature quite another.

“Mrs. Appleby,” interrupted the Duke, “can you seriously suppose that I nourish the slightest improper design towards that child? Why, she is hardly out of the school-room!”

“I know nothing of your designs, sir,” retorted Mrs. Appleby, “but hers are plain enough, and give her a room in my house I will not!”

“Then I must give her mine, and sleep on the sofa in the parlour,” said the Duke calmly.

Mrs. Appleby fought for breath.

“You cannot,” proceeded the Duke, “turn a child of that age into the street at this hour. Indeed, I am persuaded you are by far too good a woman to think of doing so.”

“Let her,” said Mrs. Appleby terribly, “go back to wherever it was she came from!”

“It is quite impossible that she should do so. I see I shall have to entrust the whole story to your ears,” said the Duke.

He then proceeded, somewhat to his own astonishment and considerably more to Mrs. Appleby’s, to weave about the unconscious persons of Belinda and Mr. Thomas Mamble a lurid and fantastic story in which defaulting trustees, cruel stepfathers, and hideous persecution figured prominently, if somewhat obscurely. He cast himself for the role of secret envoy, but being quite unable to think of any reason for an envoy’s presence in Baldock, took refuge in an air of mystery which so much bewildered Mrs. Appleby that she ended by weakly saying that Belinda might have a small bed-chamber at the back of the house for one night only, and that not because she believed one word of Mr. Rufford’s story, but because she was not, she hoped, an unmerciful woman.