You have seen Catherine, but you do not know half her good qualities: she would grace any station; and, besides, she nursed me so carefully last year, when I broke my collar-bone in that cursed steeple-chase.

Egad, I am getting too heavy and growing too old for such schoolboy pranks." "I have no doubt of Mrs.Morton's excellence, and I honour your motives; still, when you talk of her gracing any station, you must not forget, my dear brother, that she will be no more received as Mrs.Beaufort than she is now as Mrs.Morton." "But I tell you, Robert, that I am really married to her already; that she would never have left her home but on that condition; that we were married the very day we met after her flight." Robert's thin lips broke into a slight sneer of incredulity.

"My dear brother, you do right to say this--any man in your situation would say the same.

But I know that my uncle took every pains to ascertain if the report of a private marriage were true." "And you helped him in the search.

Eh, Bob ?" Bob slightly blushed.