It is more than probable that, under ordinary circumstances, Mr. Coe would have resented this rebuke with choleric vehemence; but he had his reasons for being good-humored in the present instance.  “You must excuse my country manners, Mrs. Basil,” said he.  “As my wife will tell you, I must always have my joke; but I mean no offense.  So you were housekeeper at Crompton, were you?  Well, now, that’s curious, for Mrs. Coe’s father and I myself, as you heard me saying, have had a great deal to do with Carew.  You knew him well, of course?”

“Yes, Sir; I did.”

“And the place too, of course.  It was a very fine one, was it not?  Plenty of pictures, and looking-glasses, and things?”

“It was very richly furnished.”

It was curious to mark the difference of manner between questioner and respondent.  Solomon, usually so reticent and reserved, was grown quite voluble.  Mrs. Basil, on the other hand, naturally so apt in speech, seemed to reply with difficulty.  She was weighing every word.

“The estate, I suppose, was out of your beat; you did not have much to do with that?”

“I used to walk in the park, Sir, most days.”

“Ay; but the property generally?  The friend who writes you to-day don’t say any thing about that, I suppose—­whether any of it is to be sold or not, for instance?”

“The report—­of course, being a servant, she can only speak from report—­is that Mr. Carew’s affairs are in a sad state.  Every thing, I believe, is to be sold at once.  The whole estate is said to be—­I don’t know if I use the right term—­mortgaged.”

“Just so,” replied Solomon; “yes, yes.  That is so, no doubt.”  There was a slight pause; Mrs. Basil courtesied, and was about to leave the room.  “Stop a bit, ma’am,” said Solomon.  “My wife tells me that you are a lone woman—­a widow.  Perhaps you’d like to take a bit of dinner with us to-day?”

Harry began to think her husband was intoxicated.  He did get occasionally so when any particularly good stroke of business was in course of progress, and on such occasions his manner was unusually affable; but she had never seen him half so gracious as at present.  Hospitality, though he did sometimes bring a mining agent or a broker home to dinner, was by no means his strong point.  Mrs. Basil looked doubtfully at her dress, which, though homely, was perfectly well-made and lady-like, and murmured something about its being almost the dinner-hour, and there being “no time.”

“Oh, never mind your gown” (which, by-the-by, Solomon pronounced “gownd"); “we’re quite plain people ourselves, as my wife will tell you.  You shall take pot-luck with us.  Where’s Charley?  That boy’s always late.”

But at that very moment the young gentleman in question entered the room, at the same time as did the servant with the announcement that dinner was on the table.

The astonishment of the domestic at seeing her mistress taken down to the dining-room by the new lodger was only exceeded by that of Charley, as, with his mother on his arm, he followed the strangely assorted pair.  “I knew she was a witch,” he murmured, “with her human skull and her Joanna Southcott; but this beats old Margery’s doings at Gethin.”