“Just so,” said the postillion; “and now I’m sure I am not mistaken about you; you have taken lessons yourself, at first hand, in the college vacations, and a promising pupil you were, I make no doubt.  Well, your friends will be all the happier to get you back.  Has your governor much borough interest?”

“I ask you once more,” said I, addressing myself to Belle, “what you think of the history which this good man has made for us?”

“What should I think of it,” said Belle, still keeping her face buried in her hands, “but that it is mere nonsense?”

“Nonsense!” said the postillion.

“Yes,” said the girl, “and you know it.”

“May my leg always ache, if I do,” said the postillion, patting his leg with his hand; “will you persuade me that this young man has never been at college?”

“I have never been at college, but—­”

“Ay, ay,” said the postillion; “but—­”

“I have been to the best schools in Britain, to say nothing of a celebrated one in Ireland.”

“Well, then, it comes to the same thing,” said the postillion; “or perhaps you know more than if you had been at college—­and your governor?”

“My governor, as you call him,” said I, “is dead.”

“And his borough interest?”

“My father had no borough interest,” said I; “had he possessed any, he would perhaps not have died as he did, honourably poor.”

“No, no,” said the postillion; “if he had had borough interest, he wouldn’t have been poor nor honourable, though perhaps a right honourable.  However, with your grand education and genteel manners, you made all right at last by persuading this noble young gentlewoman to run away from boarding-school with you.”

“I was never at a boarding-school,” said Belle, “unless you call—­”

“Ay, ay,” said the postillion, “boarding-school is vulgar, I know:  I beg your pardon, I ought to have called it academy, or by some other much finer name—­you were in something much greater than a boarding-school.”

“There you are right,” said Belle, lifting up her head and looking the postillion full in the face by the light of the charcoal fire; “for I was bred in the workhouse.”

“Wooh!” said the postillion.

“It is true that I am of good—­”

“Ay, ay,” said the postillion, “let us hear—­”

“Of good blood,” continued Belle; “my name is Berners, Isopel Berners, though my parents were unfortunate.  Indeed, with respect to blood, I believe I am of better blood than the young man.”

“There you are mistaken,” said I; “by my father’s side I am of Cornish blood, and by my mother’s of brave French Protestant extraction.  Now, with respect to the blood of my father—­and to be descended well on the father’s side is the principal thing—­it is the best blood in the world, for the Cornish blood, as the proverb says—­”