“Oh! horribly; and unless it had been for a four-year bill of Stulz, I shouldn’t have troubled him so soon. But, as I was aware that Walter knew of the obligation about my future fortune, I gave him to understand that I was devoted to Miss Coutts, and that I had no reason to despair. The very thought of such a thing was death both to the old Jack Daw and the young. The squire and his eldest hope would have been both in the poor-house if I had succeeded in carrying off the heiress, and had kept them to their bond. So, after a week or two, I let them off for their alarm, and a moderate tip. But all these things, my dear Teysham, are over now. I am resolved to marry Jane Somers, and cut both Stulz and Crocky.”
“If you can get her; but this old monster, with the uncommon name, has her in his power. We must concert measures calmly, and we need not despair. Will she herself help us?”
“To be sure she will. Her new home must be misery to her. She is the daughter of a sister of this old Smith, who, by some chance or other, married a gentleman. She had a large fortune, which now belongs to this only child. Colonel Somers has long been dead; the widow died a few years ago. Jane was then educated in the house of another guardian, a cousin of Colonel Somers, who lived near Bath; and, on his lately being sent to India on a high command, she was claimed by this Manchester hobgoblin, and torn from all her old friends.”
“Yourself among the rest?”
“Just so—and now you know the whole story.”
In which respect, as we conclude, the reader is by this time on a par with Lord Teysham, we quit the conclave at Fushie Bridge, and proceed to the more splendid apartments in Douglas’s Hotel.
In the little drawing-room that looks to St Andrew Square, the evening seemed to have passed stupidly enough. Aunt Alice, after yawning till tea time, and scolding the greater part of that excellent time-killer, had at last, at about nine o’clock, betaken herself to her bedroom, to bring down the Scottish Chiefs—a book of manners and statistics from which all her notions of the Scottish nation of an early period were derived. Waverley, and the other northern stories of the enchanter, supplied her with all her modern information; and not very bad sources they would have been, if Miss Alice had been able to understand the language in which they were written. But our noble vernacular was to her a more impenetrable mystery than any revealed at Eleusis, and it was, perhaps, on this account that she entertained so decided a preference for the performance of Miss Porter.
Jane Somers, whom we have hitherto represented as either listless or sleeping, was sitting busily engaged in the somewhat unusual occupation of thinking. And, as her thoughts were wandering about Lansdowne, and a vast apartment, nobly lighted and filled with the sounds of revelry by night, we need not be surprised if they occasionally made a detour to the stables of Fushie Bridge, and the sight that met her there. While musing deeply on these very interesting subjects, our friend Copus entered the room and said—
“Please, mum, one of the vaiters here knows all about them there places as master talks so much on; p’raps Miss Alice would like to hear about ’em?”
“I will tell my aunt, William,” said the young lady, and returned to her former musings.