"Silence!" thundered Mr. Muffles; and the vociferations instantly ceased.
"Now, my boy," said Mr. Greenwood, addressing the one who stood nearest to him, "I will ask you a question or two. What is your name?"
"Jem Blister, sir," was the prompt reply.
"James Blister—eh? Well—who gave you that name?"
"Father and mother, please, sir."
"Blister, for shame!" ejaculated Mr. Muffles, with a terrific frown: then, by way of prompting the lad, he said, "My Godfathers and—"
"My Godfathers and Godmother in my baptism," hastily cried the boy, catching at the hint; and after a pause, he added, "I mean an outward and visible sign of an inward—"
"Blister, I am raly ashamed of you!" again exclaimed Mr. Twiggs. "Stand back, sir; and let the boy behind you stand for'ard."
Another urchin stepped forth from the rank, and stood, blushing up to his very hair, and fumbling about with his cap, in the presence of Mr. Greenwood.
"My good boy," said the Member of Parliament, condescendingly patting him upon the head, "what is your name?"
"M. or N. as the case may be, please, sir," replied the boy.
"I should observe, sir," said the schoolmaster, "that this lad only began his Catechism yesterday."
"Oh very well, Mr. Twiggs," exclaimed Greenwood: "that accounts for his answer! I will ask him something else, then. My good lad, who was Adam?"
"The fust man, sir."
"Very good, my boy. And who was Eve?"
"The fust 'ooman, sir."
"Very good indeed," repeated Mr. Greenwood. "Now tell me what is the capital of England?"
"This boy is not in geography, sir," said Mr. Twiggs. "He's jest begun cyphering."
"Oh very good. Can you say your multiplication table, my boy?"
"Twice one's two; twice two's three; twice three's eight; twice four's ten; twice five's fourteen—"
The boy was rattling on at a furious pace, when the ominous voice of Mr. Twiggs ejaculated, "Garlick, I am ashamed of you!"
And Master Garlick began to cry most piteously.
"Come, it is not so bad, though," said Mr. Greenwood, by way of soothing the discomfited schoolmaster and restoring the abashed beadle to confidence; "he evidently knows his Bible very well—and that is the essential."
The Member of Parliament then delivered himself of a long harangue in favour of a sound religious education and in praise of virtue; and thus ended the solemn farce.
The great man bowed and withdrew: the beadle rapped his staff upon the floor; Lafleur opened the door; and the procession filed slowly out of the mansion.
Mr. Greenwood, having thus gone through a ceremony an account of which was to appear in the papers on the following morning, hurried up to the drawing-room where Lady Cecilia awaited him.
"My dear Cecilia," he exclaimed, as he entered the room, "a thousand pardons for keeping you; but the fact is that the position in which an intelligent and independent constituency has placed me, entails upon me duties—"
"A truce to that absurdity with me," interrupted the baronet's wife, in a more peremptory tone than Mr. Greenwood had ever yet heard her use. "I am come according to appointment to settle a most unpleasant business. Here is my husband's acknowledgment, drawn up as you desired: please to deliver up to me the bill."
Mr. Greenwood ran his eye over the document, and appeared satisfied. He then drew forth the bill from his pocket-book, and handed it to Lady Cecilia.
There was a flush upon the lady's delicately pale countenance; and her eyes sparkled with unusual vivacity. She was dressed in a very neat, but plain and simple manner; and Mr. Greenwood fancied that she had never seemed so interesting before.
As he delivered the bill into her keeping, he took her hand and endeavoured to convey it to his lips.
She drew back with an air of offended dignity, which would have well become a lady that had never surrendered herself to the pleasures of an illicit love.
"No, Mr. Greenwood," she said, in a firm, and even haughty tone: "all that is ended between you and me. You are a heartless man, who cannot appreciate the warmth with which a confiding woman yields herself up to you;—you have treated me—the daughter of a peer—like a pensioned mistress. But let that now pass:—I have made you acquainted with the nature of my thoughts—and I am satisfied."
"I am at a loss to understand how I should have deserved these harsh words, Cecilia," replied Greenwood, with a somewhat supercilious smile; "but perhaps my inability to supply you with the means of gratifying your extravagances has given you offence."
"Your cool indifference of late has indeed given me a bitter lesson," said Lady Cecilia.
"And yet I manifested every disposition to serve you, madam," rejoined Greenwood haughtily, "when I consented to compromise your husband's felony."
"Yes—you generously abandoned your claim to a thousand pounds," exclaimed Cecilia, with cutting irony, "in order to hush up an intrigue with the wife of the man whom you had inveigled into your net. But think not, Mr. Greenwood, that I attempt to justify my husband's conduct: I know him to be a heartless—a bad—an unprincipled man;—and yet, Mr. Greenwood, I do not conceive that you would shine the more resplendently by being placed in contrast with him. One word more. Had you refused to deliver up that bill, I was prepared to pay it. Some unknown friend had heard of this transaction—heaven alone knows how; and that friend forwarded last evening the means wherewith to liquidate this debt. Here is the letter which contained a Bank-note for a thousand pounds: it fell into my hands, and my husband knows naught concerning it;—can you say whose writing that is?"
Greenwood glanced hastily at the letter, and exclaimed, "Yes—I know that writing well: Mrs. Arlington is your husband's generous friend!"
"Mrs. Arlington!" exclaimed Cecilia: "Oh!—now I recollect that rumour points to that woman as having once been my husband's mistress."
"The same," said Greenwood, struck by this noble act on the part of the fair one whom he himself had first seduced from the paths of virtue.
"It would now be difficult to decide," observed Cecilia, in a tone of profound contempt, "which has acted the more noble part—the late mistress of Sir Rupert Harborough, or the late lover of his wife."
Greenwood only answered with a satirical curl of the lip.
Lady Cecilia rose from her seat, bowed coldly to the capitalist, and withdrew.
Thus terminated the amours of the man of the world and the lady of fashion—ending, as such illicit loves usually do, in a quarrel.
But the reader must not suppose that the same sentiments of pride which had thus induced Lady Cecilia to break off abruptly a connexion which her paramour had been for some time dissolving by degrees, influenced her in the use to which she appropriated the handsome sum supplied for an especial purpose by Mrs. Arlington. The lady knew no compunction in this respect, and she therefore devoted the thousand pounds so generously forwarded by her husband's late mistress, to her own wants!
* * * * *
The Italian valet had overheard the entire conversation between Lady Cecilia Harborough and Mr. Greenwood, which we have just described.
In the course of the day the whole details of that interview were communicated to Mrs. Arlington, who thus learnt that Lady Cecilia had intercepted the money intended for Sir Rupert Harborough, and had settled the forged bill without being compelled to disburse