For, during all this time, Miss Rodney had had her eye on her fellow-lodger, Mr. Rawcliffe, and the more she observed this gentleman, the more resolute she became to turn him out of the house; but it was plain to her that the undertaking would be no easy one.  In the landlady’s eyes Mr. Rawcliffe, though not perhaps a faultless specimen of humanity, conferred an honour on her house by residing in it; the idea of giving him notice to quit was inconceivable to her.  This came out very clearly in the first frank conversation which Miss Rodney held with her on the topic.  It happened that Mr. Rawcliffe had passed an evening at home, in the company of his friends.  After supping together, the gentlemen indulged in merriment which, towards midnight, became uproarious.  In the morning Mrs. Turpin mumbled a shamefaced apology for this disturbance of Miss Rodney’s repose.

‘Why don’t you take this opportunity and get rid of him?’ asked the lodger in her matter-of-fact tone.

‘Oh, miss!’

’Yes, it’s your plain duty to do so.  He gives your house a bad character; he sets a bad example to your husband; he has a bad influence on your daughters.’

‘Oh! miss, I don’t think’

’Just so, Mrs. Turpin; you don’t think.  If you had, you would long ago have noticed that his behaviour to those girls is not at all such as it should be.  More than once I have chanced to hear bits of talk, when either Mabel or Lily was in his sitting-room, and didn’t like the tone of it.  In plain English, the man is a blackguard.’

Mrs. Turpin gasped.

‘But, miss, you forget what family he belongs to.’

’Don’t be a simpleton, Mrs. Turpin.  The blackguard is found in every rank of life.  Now, suppose you go to him as soon as he gets up, and quietly give him notice.  You’ve no idea how much better you would feel after it.’

But Mrs. Turpin trembled at the suggestion.  It was evident that no ordinary argument or persuasion would bring her to such a step.  Miss Rodney put the matter aside for the moment.

She had found no difficulty in getting information about Mr. Rawcliffe.  It was true that he belonged to a family of some esteem in the Wattleborough neighbourhood, but his father had died in embarrassed circumstances, and his mother was now the wife of a prosperous merchant in another town.  To his stepfather Rawcliffe owed an expensive education and two or three starts in life.  He was in his second year of articles to a Wattle-borough solicitor, but there seemed little probability of his ever earning a living by the law, and reports of his excesses which reached the stepfather’s ears had begun to make the young man’s position decidedly precarious.  The incumbent of St. Luke’s, whom Rawcliffe had more than once insulted, took much interest in Miss Rodney’s design against this common enemy; he could not himself take active part in the campaign, but he never met the High School mistress without inquiring what progress she had made.  The conquest of Turpin, who now for several weeks had kept sober, and spent his evenings in mathematical study, was a most encouraging circumstance; but Miss Rodney had no thought of using her influence over her landlady’s husband to assail Rawcliffe’s position.  She would rely upon herself alone, in this as in all other undertakings.