"But swooning—that's a sign she was in earnest. She was never in earnest with me—just a hoyden asking to be won."
"I crave your honour's pardon. The girl was in earnest enough when she smashed your carriage window with the heel of her shoe and leaped out like a young filly clearing a five barred gate."
"Pest! Don't remind me of that. It makes me sick when I think how I was fooled and that you were such an ass as to let her slip."
"Sir, I did my best and but for the spark who had the impudence to thrust his nose into what didn't concern him, I'd have had her safe. But I've made amends. I've run her to earth."
"Satan's helped you then. Where is she?"
"At her mother's house in the Old Bailey."
"That's a lie."
"Sir!"
"I tell you it's a lie. Her mother visited me at my chambers yesterday. She'd got the story pat of Lavinia's running away with me from school and all the rest of it. The old woman's not much better than Mother Needham. Faith, she's a shade worse. She agreed to let me have the girl for fifty guineas. She'd got the chit locked up she said. I went to her Old Bailey hovel to-day—gad, I've got the smell of the cooked meats and boiled greens in my nostrils at this minute—and damn it, she said the girl had run away. And now you tell me she's there."
"I do, sir. With these eyes which I flatter myself don't often mistake when they rest on a well turned ankle, a trim waist and a pretty face. I swear I saw her go into the house."