"Do you know, Tom, it looks uncommonly like a piece of deliberate humbug!"
"Your ignorance misleads you, Fred. You would not say so had you seen her. So sweet—so gentle—with such a tinge of melancholy resignation in her eye, like that of a virgin martyr about to suffer at the stake! No one could look upon her for a moment and doubt her purity and truth."
"Perhaps. But you must allow that we are not living exactly in the age of romance. An elopement with an officer of dragoons is about the farthest extent of legitimate enterprise which is left to a modern damsel; and, upon my word, I think the story would have told better, had some such hero been inserted as a sort of counterpoise to the Jew. But what's the matter? Have you lost anything?"
"It is very odd!" said Strachan, "I am perfectly certain that I had on my emerald studs last night. I recollect that Dorothea admired them exceedingly. Where on earth can I have put them?"
"I don't know, I'm sure. I suspect, Tom, you and the Bailie were rather convivial after supper. Is your watch wound up?"
"Of course it is. I assure you you are quite wrong. It was a mere matter of four or five tumblers. Very odd this! Why—I can't find my watch neither!"
"Hallo! what the deuce! Have we fallen into a den of thieves? This is a nice beginning to our circuit practice."
"I could swear, Fred, that I put it below my pillow before I went to sleep. I remember, now, that it was some time before I could fit in the key. What can have become of it?"
"And you have not left your room since?"