“If you haven’t a good voice, sir, you could whisper the words into her ear, and as you’re so near the mouth—­hem—­a word to the wise—­then point to the chaise that you’ll have standin’ outside, and my life for you, there’s an end to the fees o’ the docther.”

His master, who had relapsed into thought before he concluded his advice, looked at him without seeming to have heard it.  He then traversed the room several times, his chin supported by his finger and thumb, after which he seemed to have formed a resolution.

“Go, sir,” said he, “and put that letter to Father M’Mahon in the post-office.  I shall not want you for some time.”

“Will I ordher a chaise, sir?” replied Dandy, with a serio-comic face.

One look from his master, however, sent him about his business; but the latter could hear him lilting the “White Cockade,” as he went down stairs.

“Now,” said he, when Dandy was gone, “can it be possible that she has at length given her consent to this marriage?  Never voluntarily.  It has been extorted by foul deceit and threatening, by some base fraud practised upon her generous and unsuspecting nature.  I am culpable to stand tamely by and allow this great and glorious creature to be sacrificed to a bad ambition, and a worse man, without coming to the rescue.  But, in the meantime, is this information true?  Alas, I fear it is; for I know the unscrupulous spirit the dear girl has, alone and unassisted, to contend with.  Yet if it be true, oh, why should she not have written to me?  Why not have enabled me to come to her defence?  I know not what to think.  At all events, I shall, as a last resource, call upon her father.  I shall explain to him the risk he runs in marrying his daughter to this man who is at once a fool and a scoundrel.  But how can I do so?  Birney has not yet returned from France, and I have no proofs on which to rest such serious allegations; nothing at present but bare assertions, which her father, in the heat and fury of his ambition, might not only disbelieve, but misinterpret.  Be it so; I shall at least warn him, take it as he will; and if all else should fail, I will disclose to him my name and family, in order that he may know, at all events, that I am no impostor.  My present remonstrance may so far alarm him as to cause the persecution against Lucy to be suspended for a time, and on’ Birney’s return, we shall, I trust, be able to speak more emphatically.”

He accordingly sent for a chaise, into which he stepped and ordered the driver to leave him at Sir Thomas Gourlay’s and to wait there for him.