"Might I suggest that we have them alone ?" said he dryly.
"By all means," said Lady Bassett.

"I don't want to share my paragon with anybody." In due course a reply came; Mr.and Mrs.Marsh would avail themselves some day of Lady Bassett's kindness: at present they were going abroad.
The letter was written by a man's hand.
About this time Oldfield sent Sir Charles Miss Somerset's deed, canceled, and told him she had married a man of fortune, who was devoted to her, and preferred to take her without any dowry.
Bassett and Wheeler went home, crestfallen, and dined together.

They discussed the two trials, and each blamed the other.

They quarreled and parted: and Wheeler sent in an enormous bill, extending over five years.

Eighty-five items began thus: "Attending you at your house for several hours, on which occasion you asked my advice as to whether--" etc.
Now as a great many of these attendances had been really to shoot game and dine on rabbits at Bassett's expense, he thought it hard the conversation should be charged and the rabbits not.
Disgusted with his defeat, and resolved to evade this bill, he discharged his servant, and put a retired soldier into his house, armed him with a blunderbuss, and ordered him to keep all doors closed, and present the weapon aforesaid at all rate collectors, tax collectors, debt collectors, and applicants for money to build churches or convert the heathen; but not to _fire_ at anybody except his friend Wheeler, nor at him unless he should try to shove a writ in at some chink of the building.
This done, he went on his travels, third-class, with his eyes always open, and his heart full of bitterness.
Nothing happened to Richard Bassett on his travels that I need relate until one evening when he alighted at a small commercial inn in the city of York, and there met a person whose influence on the events I am about to relate seems at this moment incredible to me, though it is simple fact.
He found the commercial room empty, and rang the bell.