Page:Precaution; a novel by Cooper, James Fenimore.djvu/329

Rh were to have another in the neighborhood lately?" Sir Edward answered in the negative, and his neighbor continued—

"Why, no less a man than Captain Jarvis, promoted to the bloody hand."

"Captain Jarvis!" exclaimed five or six at once; "explain yourself, Mr. Haughton."

"My near neighbor, young Walker, has been to Bath on an unusual business—his health—and for the benefit of the country he has brought back a pretty piece of scandal. It seems that Lady Jarvis, as I am told she is since she left here, wished to have her hopeful heir made a lord, and that the two united for some six months in forming a kind of savings' bank between themselves, to enable them at some future day to bribe the minister to honor the peerage with such a prodigy. After a while the daughter of our late acquaintance, Sir William Harris, became an accessory to the plot, and a contributor too, to the tune of a couple of hundred pounds. Some circumstances, however, at length made this latter lady suspicious, and she wished to audit the books. The captain prevaricated—the lady remonstrated, until the gentleman, with more truth than manners, told her that she was a fool—the money he had expended or lost at dice; and that he did not think the ministers quite so silly as to make him a lord, or that he himself was such a fool as to make her his wife; so the whole thing exploded."

John listened with a delight but little short of what he had felt when Grace owned her love, and anxious to know all, eagerly inquired,—

"But, is it true? how was it found out?"

"Oh, the lady complained of part, and the captain tells all to get the laugh on his side; so that Walker says the former is the derision and the latter the contempt of all Bath."

"Poor Sir William," said the baronet, with feeling; "he is much to be pitied."

"I am afraid he has nothing to blame but his own indulgence," remarked the rector.

"You don't know the worst of it," replied Mr. Haughton.