“I can understand you, sir,” said the Judge, pompously. “The habits of your profession teach you to swallow so much that is nauseous in a sweet vehicle, that you carry the same custom into morals.”
Beattie laughed so heartily at the analogy that the old man's good-humor returned to him, and he bade him continue his narrative.
“I have not much more to tell. We reached the house by about eleven o'clock at night, and my fellow-traveller sat in the carriage till I announced her to Mrs. Sewell. My own cares called me to the sick-room, and I saw no more of the ladies till this morning, just before I came away.”
“She is, then, domesticated there? She has taken up her quarters at the Sewells' house?”
“Yes. I found her maid, too, had taken possession of Colonel Sewell's dressing-room, and dispossessed a number of his chattels to make room for her own.”
“It is a happy thing, a very happy thing for me, that I have not been tried by these ordeals,” said the Judge, with a long-drawn breath. “I wonder how Colonel Sewell will endure it.”
“I have no means of knowing; he arrived late at night, and was still in bed and asleep when I left.”
“You have not told me these people's name?”
“Trafford,—Sir Hugh Beecham Trafford, of Holt-Trafford, Staffordshire.”
“I have met the man, or rather his father, for it was nigh fifty years ago,—an old family, and of Saxon origin; and his wife,—who was she?”