frequently; I go to friends, they travel.  Here in London she must have a duenna.  The marriage at Madrid, at the Embassy:—­well, perhaps it was a step for us, for commoners, though we rank with the independent.  Has her own little pin-money—­an inheritance.  Perhaps Lady Eglett gives the world her version.  She may say, there was aiming at station.  I reply, never was there a more whole-hearted love-match!  Absolutely the girl’s heart has been his from the period of her school-days.  Oh! a little affair—­she was persecuted by a boy at a neighbouring school.  Her mistress wrote me word—­a very determined Romeo young gentleman indeed—­quite alarmed about him.  In the bud!  I carried her off on the spot, and snapped it effectually.  Warned he meant to be desperate, I kept her away from my house at Dover four months, place to place; and I did well.  I heard on my return, that a youth, answering to the schoolmistress’s description of him, had been calling several times, the first two months and longer.  You have me alluding to these little nonsensical nothings, because she seemed born to create violent attachments, even at that early day; and Lady Eglett—­Lady Charlotte Eglett may hear; for there is no end to them, and impute them to her, when really!—­can she be made responsible for eyes innocent of the mischief they appear destined to do?  But I am disturbing you in your work.”

“You are very good, ma’am,” said the ghost of the determined young gentleman.

“A slight cold, have you?” Mrs. Pagnell asked solicitously.

“Dear me, no!” he gave answer with a cleared throat.

In charging him with more than he wanted to carry, she supplied him with particulars he had wanted to know; and now he asked himself what could be the gain of any amount of satisfied curiosity regarding a married Aminta.  She slew my lord on board a packet-boat; she bears the arrows that slay.  My lord married her where the first English chaplain was to be found; that is not wonderful either.  British Embassy, Madrid!  Weyburn believed the ceremony to have been performed there:  at the same time, he could hear Lady Charlotte’s voice repeating with her varied intonation Mrs. Pagnell’s impressive utterances; and he could imagine how the somewhat silly duenna aunt, so penetrable in her transparent artifices, struck emphasis on the incredulity of people inclined to judge of the reported ceremony by Lord Ormont’s behaviour to his captive.

How explain that strange matter?  But can there be a gain in trying to sound it?  Weyburn shuffled it away.  Before the fit of passion seized him, he could turn his eager mind from anything which had not a perceptible point of gain, either for bodily strength or mental acquisition, or for money, too, now that the school was growing palpable as an infant in arms and agape for the breast.  Thought of gain, and the bent to pursue it, is the shield of Athene over young men in the press of the seductions.