'Double-gangers seldom come in yellow-bodied flys.'
'His lordship in propria persona. You don't mean it.'
'He is sleeping at the 'George' at Bickleypool. There is a letter coming to-morrow by the post, to say he is coming to-day, with every imaginable civility to you; but I am to go to the rose-coloured pastor's with him on Wednesday.'
'So there's an end of our peace and comfort!'
'I am afraid we have sadly discomposed his peace.'
'Did you discover whether his warnings have the slightest foundation?'
'He told me a history that somewhat accounts for his distrust of my aunt. I think there must be another side to it, and nothing can be more unjust than to condemn all the family, but it affected him so exceedingly that I do not wonder at his doing so. He gave no names, but I am sure it touched him very nearly. Can you tell who it could have been?' And he narrated enough to make James exclaim, 'It ought to touch him nearly. He was talking of himself.'
'Impossible!—my mother!' cried Louis, leaping up.
'Yes—his own version of his married life.'
'How do you know? You cannot remember it,' said Louis, though too well convinced, as he recollected the suppressed anguish, and the horror with which all blame of the young wife had been silenced.