“But you will eat your dinner, Sir ’Oo.  You will not mind me.  I shall not care.”

“Thank you, no; if you will just say what you have got to say, I will be obliged to you.”

“But the nice things will be so cold!  Why should you mind me?  Nobody minds me.”

“I will wait, if you please, till you have done me the honor of leaving.”

“Ah! well, you Englishmen are so cold and ceremonious.  But Lord Ongar was not with me like that.  I knew Lord Ongar so well.”

“Lord Ongar was more fortunate than I am.”

“He was a poor man who did kill himself.  Yes.  It was always that bottle of Cognac.  And there was other bottles that was worser still.  Never mind; he has gone now, and his widow has got the money.  It is she has been a fortunate woman.  Sir ’Oo, I will sit down here in the arm chair.”  Sir Hugh made a motion with his hand, not daring to forbid her to do as she was minded.  “And you, Sir ’Oo—­will not you sit down also?”

“I will continue to stand if you will allow me.”

“Very well; you shall do as most pleases you.  As I did walk here, and shall walk back, I will sit down.”

“And now, if you have any thing to say, Madam Gordeloup,” said Sir Hugh, looking at the silver covers which were hiding the chops and the asparagus, and looking also at his watch, “perhaps you will be good enough to say it.”

“Any thing to say!  Yes, Sir ’Oo, I have something to say.  It is a pity you will not sit at your dinner.”

“I will not sit at my dinner till you have left me.  So now, if you will be pleased to proceed—­”

“I will proceed.  Perhaps you don’t know that Lord Ongar died in these arms.”  And Sophie, as she spoke, stretched out her skinny hands, and put herself as far as possible into the attitude in which it would be most convenient to nurse the head of a dying man upon her bosom.  Sir Hugh, thinking to himself that Lord Ongar could hardly have received much consolation in his fate from this incident, declared that he had not heard the fact before.  “No, you have not heard it.  She have tell nothing to her friends here.  He die abroad, and she has come back with all the money; but she tell nothing to any body here, so I must tell.”

“But I don’t care how he died, Madam Gordeloup.  It is nothing to me.”

“But yes, Sir ’Oo.  The lady, your wife, is the sister to Lady Ongar.  Is not that so?  Lady Ongar did live with you before she was married.  Is not that so?  Your brother and your cousin both wishes to marry her and have all the money.  Is not that so?  Your brother has come to me to help him, and has sent the little man out of Warwickshire.  Is not that so?”

“What the d——­ is all that to me?” said Sir Hugh, who did not quite understand the story as the lady was telling it.