“If it will enable us to prevent the marriage,” replied the other, “I am satisfied.”

“That is very generous and disinterested, I grant,” said Birney, “and what few are capable of; but still there are forms of law and principles of common justice to be observed and complied with; and these, at present, stand in our way for want of the documentary evidence I speak of.”

“What then ought our next step to be?—­but I suppose I can anticipate you—­to see Mrs. Norton.”

“Of course, to see Mrs. Norton; and I propose that we start immediately.  There is no time to be lost about it.  I shall get on my boots, and change my dress a little, and, with this man of yours to guide us, we shall be on the way to Summerfield Cottage in half-an-hour.”

“Should I not communicate this intelligence to Lady Gourlay?” said the stranger.  “It will restore her to life; and surely the removal of only one day’s sorrow such as lies at her heart becomes a duty.”

“But suppose our information should prove incorrect, into what a dreadful relapse would you plunge her then!”

“On, very true—­very true, indeed:  that is well thought of; let us first see that there is no mistake, and afterwards we can proceed with confidence.”

Poor Lucy, unconscious that the events we have related had taken place, was passing an existence of which every day brought round to her nothing but anguish and misery.  She now not only refused to see her brother on any occasion, or under any circumstances, but requested an interview with her father, in order to make him acquainted with the abominable principles, by the inculcation of which, as a rule of life and conduct, he had attempted to corrupt her.  Her father having heard this portion of her complaint, diminished in its heinousness as it necessarily was by her natural modesty, appeared very angry, and swore roundly at the young scapegrace, as he called him.

“But the truth is, Lucy,” he added, “that however wrong and wicked he may have been, and was, yet we cannot be over severe on him.  He has had no opportunities of knowing better, and of course he will mend.  I intend to lecture him severely for uttering such principles to you; but, on the other hand, I know him to be a shrewd, keen young fellow, who promises well, notwithstanding.  In truth, I like him, scamp as he is; and I believe that whatever is bad in him—­”

“Whatever is bad in him!  Why, papa, there is nothing good in him.”

“Tut, Lucy; I believe, I say, that whatever is bad in him he has picked up from the kind of society he mixed with.”

“Papa,” she replied, “it grieves me to hear you, sir, palliate the conduct of such a person—­to become almost the apologist of principles so utterly fiendish.  You know that I am not and never have been in the habit of using ungenerous language against the absent.  So far as I am concerned, he has violated all the claims of a brother—­has foregone all title to