CHAPTER SIX.
THE RESCUE OF ELIZABETH KERNABY Sir Tancred paused now and again in his leisurely breakfast to scowl across the dining room at Mr.Biggleswade, who, with his sour-looking wife and woebegone little girl, was breakfasting at an opposite table.
The Royal Victoria Hotel was second-rate.

The cooking was poor, the wine was bad, and Solesgate itself was dull.

But these misfortunes Sir Tancred would have endured cheerfully because the place suited Hildebrand Anne, who had but lately recovered from an attack of scarlet fever at Farndon-Pryze, but he could not endure Mr.Biggleswade.

It was not so much that he had reckoned up Mr.Biggleswade as a large, fat, greasy rogue, nor was it that no snub once and for all stopped Mr.
Biggleswade from thrusting himself upon him with a snobbish obsequiousness; it was Mr.Biggleswade's noisy and haphazard methods of disposing of his food, which left small portions of each course nestling in his straggling beard, and filled the air with the sound of the feeding of pigs.
This Sir Tancred found unendurable, and the more unendurable that Mr.
Biggleswade had made up his mind that he enjoyed his meals more in the presence of a baronet, and always waited for his coming.
Sir Tancred was eating his breakfast mournfully, therefore, reflecting on the unkindness of Fortune, who had afflicted Tinker with his fever at so inconvenient a time.

For he had not been able to raise the money to take him to make his convalescence at one of the more expensive watering places, whither resort millionaires and the smart, whose fondness for games of chance and skill would have kept him in careless luxury.