‘Tell me,’ said the other.
‘Your worthy lady with the tender conscience; your scrupulous, virtuous, punctilious, but not blindly affectionate wife—’
‘What of her?’
‘Is now in London.’
‘A curse upon her, be she where she may!’
‘That’s natural enough. If she had taken her annuity as usual, you would not have been here, and we should have been better off. But that’s apart from the business. She’s in London. Scared, as I suppose, and have no doubt, by my representation when I waited upon her, that you were close at hand (which I, of course, urged only as an inducement to compliance, knowing that she was not pining to see you), she left that place, and travelled up to London.’
‘How do you know?’
‘From my friend the noble captain—the illustrious general—the bladder, Mr Tappertit. I learnt from him the last time I saw him, which was yesterday, that your son who is called Barnaby—not after his father, I suppose—’
‘Death! does that matter now!’
‘—You are impatient,’ said the blind man, calmly; ‘it’s a good sign, and looks like life—that your son Barnaby had been lured away from her by one of his companions who knew him of old, at Chigwell; and that he is now among the rioters.’