Did any gentleman, short and dirty, with a hooked nose, inquire for him yesterday?
Elizabeth thought a minute, and recollected that some person answering the above not too flattering description had called, but refused to leave his name, saying he did not know the ladies, but was a particular friend of Mr.Leaf's.
Ascott laughed.

"So he is--a very particular friend; but my aunts would not fancy him, and I don't want him to come here.

Say, if he calls, that I'm gone out of town." "Very well, sir.

Shall you start before dinner ?" said Elizabeth, whose practical mind immediately recurred to that meal, and to the joint, always contrived to be hot on the days that Ascott dined at home.
He seemed excessively tickled.

"Bless you, you are the greatest innocent! Just say what I tell you, and never mind--hush! here's Aunt Hilary." And Miss Hilary's anxious face, white with long wakefulness, had put out of Elizabeth's head the answer that was coming; indeed the matter slipped from her mind altogether, in consequence of another circumstance which gave her much more perplexity.
During her young mistress's absence, supposing Miss Selina out too, and Miss Leaf up stairs, she had come suddenly into the parlor without knocking.