Sir Elkanah Crofton arrived at the house, we
were all in the garden. Sir Samuel had taken me
there to see some tulips, which he said were
the finest in Europe, except some at the Hague.
Maybe it was that the old baronet was vexed at
seeing nobody come to meet him, or that
something else had crossed him, but as he entered
the garden I saw he was sorely out of temper.

"'How d'ye do, Sir Elkanah?' said Whalley
to him, coming up pleasantly. 'We scarcely
expected you before dinner-time. My wife and
my daughters,' said he, introducing them; but
the other only removed his hat ceremoniously,
without ever noticing them in the least.

"'I hope you had a pleasant journey, Sir
Elkanah?' said Whalley, after a pause, while,
with a short jerk of his head, he made sign to
the ladies to leave them.

"'I trust I am not the means of breaking up a
family party?' said the other, half sarcastically.
'Is Mrs. Whalley——'

"'Lady Whalley, with your good permission,
sir,' said Samuel, stiffly.

"'Of course—how stupid of me! I should have
remembered you had been knighted. And, indeed,
the thought was full upon me as I came along,
for I scarcely suppose that if higher ambitions
had not possessed you, I should find the farm
buildings and the outhouses in the state of ruin
I see them.'

"'They are better by ten thousand pounds
than the day on which I first saw them; and I
say it in the presence of this honest townsman
here, my neighbour'—meaning me—'that both
you and they were very creaky concerns when I
took you in hand.'

"I thought the old baronet was going to have
a fit at these words, and he caught hold of my
arm and swayed backwards and forwards all the
time, his face purple with passion.

"'Who made you, sir? who made you?'
cried he at last, with a voice trembling with
rage.

"'The same hand that made us all,' said the
other, calmly. 'The same wise Providence
that, for his own ends, creates drones as well as
bees, and makes rickety old baronets as well as
men of brains and industry.'

"'You shall rue this insolence—it shall cost
you dearly, by Heaven!' cried out the old man,
as he gripped me tighter. 'You are a witness,
sir, to the way I have been insulted. I'll foreclose
your mortgage—I'll call in every shilling
I have advanced—I'll sell the house over your
head——'

"'Ay! but the head without a roof over it
will hold itself higher than your own, old man.
The good faculties and good health God has
given me are worth all your title-deeds twice
told. If I walk out of this town as poor as the
day I came into it, I'll go with the calm
certainty that I can earn my bread—a process that
would be very difficult for you when you could
not lend out money on interest.'

"'Give me your arm, sir, back to the town,'
said the old baronet to me; 'I feel myself too
ill to go all alone.'

"'Get him to step into the house and take
something,' whispered Whalley in my ear, as he
turned away and left us. But I was afraid to
propose it; indeed, if I had, I believe the old
man would have had a fit on the spot, for he
trembled from head to foot, and drew long sighs
as if recovering out of a faint.

"'Is there an inn near this,' asked he, 'where
I can stop? and have you a doctor here?'

"'You can have both, Sir Elkanah,' said I.

"'You know me, then?—you know who I
am?' said he, hastily, as I called him by his
name.

"'That I do, sir, and I hold my place under
you; my name is Shore.'

"'Yes, I remember,' said he, vaguely, as he
moved away. When we came to the gate on
the road he turned around full and looked at the
house, overgrown with that rich red creeper that
was so much admired. 'Mark my words, my
good man,' said he—'mark them well, and as
sure as I live I'll not leave one stone on another
of that dwelling there.'"

"He was promising more than he could perform,"
said the attorney.

"I don't know that," sighed the meek man;
"there's very little that money can't do in this
life."

"And what has become of Whalley's widow—
if she be a widow?" asked one.

"She's in a poor way. She's up at the village
yonder, and, with the help of one of her girls,
she's trying to keep a children's school."

"Lady Whalley's school?" exclaimed one, in
half sarcasm.

"Yes; but she has taken her maiden name
again since this disaster, and calls herself Mrs.
Herbert."

"Has she more than one daughter, sir?"
I asked of the last speaker.

"Yes, there are two girls; the younger one,
they tell me, is going, or gone, abroad, to take
some situation or other—a teacher, or a
governess."

"No, sir," said the pluffy man, "Miss Kate
has gone as companion to an old widow lady at
Brussels—Mrs. Keats. I saw the letter that
arranged the terms—a trifle less per annum than
her mother gave to her maid."

"Poor girl!" sighed the sad man. "It's a
dreary way to begin life!"

I nodded assentingly to him, and with a
smile of gratitude for his sympathy. Indeed,
the sentiment had linked me to him, and made
me wish to be beside him. The conversation
now grew discursive, on the score of all the
difficulties that beset women when reduced to
make efforts for their own support; and though
the speakers were men well able to understand
and pronounce upon the knotty problem, the
subject did not possess interest enough to turn
my mind from the details I had just been hearing.
The name of Miss Herbert on the trunks
showed me now who was the young lady I had
met, and I reproached myself bitterly with
having separated from her, and thus forfeited
the occasion of befriending her on her journey.