It was early to go home, but yet it was late in the day; the last ray of the sun had already faded from the cloud-edges, and the October night was casting over the moorlands the shadow of her approach.

Mr. Yorke—moderately exhilarated with his moderate libations, and not displeased to see young Moore again in Yorkshire, and to have him for his comrade during the long ride home—took the discourse much to himself. He touched briefly, but scoffingly, on the trials and the conviction; he passed thence to the gossip of the neighbourhood, and, erelong, he attacked Moore on his own personal concerns.

‘Bob, I believe you are worsted; and you deserve it. All was smooth. Fortune had fallen in love with you; she had decreed you the first prize in her wheel—twenty thousand pounds; she only required that you should hold your hand out and take it. And what did you do? You called for a horse and rode a-hunting to Warwickshire. Your sweetheart—Fortune, I mean—was perfectly indulgent. She said, “I’ll excuse him; he’s young.” She waited, like “Patience on a monument,” till the chase was over and the vermin-prey run down. She expected you would come back then, and be a good lad: you might still have had her first prize.

‘It capped her beyond expression, and me too, to find that, instead of thundering home in a breakneck gallop, and laying your assize laurels at her feet, you coolly took coach up to London. What you have done there, Satan knows—nothing in this world, I believe, but sat and sulked. Your face was never lily- fair, but it is olive-green now. You’re not as bonnie as you were, man.’

‘And who is to have this prize you talk so much about?’

‘Only a baronet—that is all. I have not a doubt in my own mind you’ve lost her; she will be Lady Nunnely before Christmas.’

‘Hem! Quite probable.’

‘But she need not to have been. Fool of a lad! I swear you might have had her!’

‘By what token, Mr. Yorke?’

‘By every token. By the light of her eyes, the red of her cheeks; red they grew when your name was mentioned, though of custom they are pale.’

‘My chance is quite over, I suppose?’

‘It ought to be; but try: it is worth trying. I call this Sir Philip milk and water. And, then, he writes verses, they say—tags rhymes. You are above that, Bob, at all events.’

‘Would you advise me to propose, late as it is, Mr. Yorke?—at the eleventh hour?’

‘You can but make the experiment, Robert. If she has a fancy for you—and, on my conscience, I believe she has, or had—she will forgive much. But, my lad, you are laughing; is it at me? You had better grin at your own perverseness. I see, however, you laugh at the wrong side of your mouth; you have as sour a look at this moment as one need wish to see.’

‘I have so quarrelled with myself, Yorke. I have so kicked against the pricks, and struggled in a strait waistcoat, and dislocated my wrists with wrenching them in handcuffs, and battered my hard head, by driving it against a harder wall.’

‘Ha! I’m glad to hear that. Sharp exercise yon! I hope it has done you good; ta’en some of the selfconceit out of you?’