Cheer up; and good-bye, my dear boy.

I must be trotting off now, or my poor blind woman will think I'm never coming to read to her." And off she went, leaving me much happier than old Shuffler had done.
Confound him! What did he mean, with his cock-and-a-bull story?
On reaching Lady Dasher's house, however, the house-agent's rumour was, to my great distress, confirmed; and, that in the most authoritative manner.
It must be true then, in spite of Miss Pimpernell's denial! My lady was in one of her most morbid and melancholy moods, too, which did not help to mend matters.
I praised her fuchsias on entering; but even this homage to her favourite hobby failed to rouse her.
She had heard that Mrs Clyde had some of the most beautiful pelargonia; and what were _her_ paltry flowers in comparison?
Alas! she was poor, and could only afford a few miserable fuchsias to decorate her drawing-room--or rather the better to exhibit its poverty! If her poor, dear papa had been alive, things of course would have been very different; and she could have had petunias, or orchids, or any of the rarest hot-house flowers she pleased; but, now, she was poor, although proud, and could not afford them like that rich parvenue.
How, good things always seemed given to those who are above their need! There was Mrs Clyde getting her only daughter engaged to be married also, she heard; while no suitor came forward for _her_ two poor orphan girls! Such was the staple of her conversation--enlivening, at any rate.
"Oh, ma!" exclaimed Bessie Dasher at this juncture; "you should not say so to Mr Lorton! He'll think you wish him to propose at once!" and both she and her sister burst out laughing at the idea.
"So I would," said I, jokingly, notwithstanding that I felt as melancholy and little inclined for raillery as their mother, whose words seemed to clinch what old Shuffler had said.

"So I would, too, if there weren't a pair of you, and bigamy contrary to law.

`How happy could I be with either, were t'other dear charmer away.' But," I continued, turning to Lady Dasher, with an assumption of easy indifference which I found it hard to counterfeit under the searching glances of the two wild Irish girls, her daughters, "is it really true what you said just now about Mrs Clyde's daughter, Lady Dasher ?" "Yes, Mr Lorton," she replied, "to the best of my belief it is; for, I have heard, on the most unimpeachable authority, that she is engaged to Mr Mawley.

He is always going there, you know." "But that is no proof, ma," said Bessie Dasher, who, as I have hinted before, was suspected of a slight tenderness towards the curate.