this captivating looseness and putting-off of everything, this airy dispensing with all principle and purpose, at his elbow. I thought I could understand how such a nature as my guardian’s, experienced in the world, and forced to contemplate the miserable evasions and contentions of the family misfortune, found an immense relief in Mr Skimpole’s avowal of his weaknesses and display of guileless candour; but I could not satisfy myself that it was as artless as it seemed; or that it did not serve Mr Skimpole’s idle turn quite as well as any other part, and with less trouble.

They both walked back with me; and Mr Skimpole leaving us at the gate, I walked softly in with Richard, and said, “Ada, my love, I have brought a gentleman to visit you.” It was not difficult to read the blushing, startled face. She loved him dearly, and he knew it, and I knew it. It was a very transparent business, that meeting as cousins only.

I almost mistrusted myself, as growing quite wicked in my suspicions, but I was not so sure that Richard loved her dearly. He admired her very much — any one must have done that — and I dare say, would have renewed their youthful engagement with great pride and ardour, but that he knew how she would respect her promise to my guardian. Still, I had a tormenting idea that the influence upon him extended even here: that he was postponing his best truth and earnestness, in this as in all things, until Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be off his mind. Ah me! What Richard would have been without that blight, I never shall know now!

He told Ada, in his most ingenuous way, that he had not come to make any secret inroad on the terms she had accepted (rather too implicitly and confidingly, he thought) from Mr Jarndyce; that he had come openly to see her, and to see me, and to justify himself for the present terms on which he stood with Mr Jarndyce. As the dear old infant would be with us directly, he begged that I would make an appointment for the morning, when he might set himself right, through the means of an unreserved conversation with me. I proposed to walk with him in the park at seven o’clock, and this was arranged. Mr Skimpole soon afterwards appeared, and made us merry for an hour. He particularly requested to see Little Coavinses (meaning Charley), and told her, with a patriarchal air, that he had given her late father all the business in his power; and that if one of her little brothers would make haste to get set-up in the same profession, he hoped he should still be able to put a good deal of employment in his way.

“For I am constantly being taken in these nets,” said Mr Skimpole, looking beamingly at us over a glass of wine-and-water, “and am constantly being bailed out — like a boat. Or paid off — like a ship’s company. Somebody always does it for me. I can’t do it, you know, for I never have any money. But somebody does it. I get out by Somebody’s means; I am not like the starling; I get out. If you were to ask me who Somebody is, upon my word, I couldn’t tell you. Let us drink to Somebody. God bless him!”

Richard was a little late in the morning, but I had not to wait for him long, and we turned into the park. The air was bright and dewy, and the sky without a cloud. The birds sang delightfully; the sparkles in the fern, the grass, and trees, were exquisite to see; the richness of the woods seemed to have increased twenty-fold since yesterday, as if, in the still night when they had looked so massively hushed in sleep, Nature, through all the minute details of every wonderful leaf, had been more wakeful than usual for the glory of that day.

“This is a lovely place,” said Richard, looking round. “None of the jar and discord of law-suits here!”

But there was other trouble.

“I tell you what, my dear girl,” said Richard, “when I get affairs in general settled, I shall come down here, I think, and rest.”

“Would it not be better to rest now?” I asked.

“Oh, as to resting now,” said Richard, “or as to doing anything very definite now, that’s not easy. In short, it can’t be done; I can’t do it, at least.”