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the road from the coach, my dear, but a poor person in a very ungenteel bonnet———”

“Jenny, if you please, miss,” said Charley.

“Just so!” Miss Flite acquiesced with the greatest suavity. “Jenny. Ye-es! And what does she tell our young friend, but that there has been a lady with a veil inquiring at her cottage after my dear Fitz Jarndyce's health, and taking a handkerchief away with her as a little keepsake, merely because it was my amiable Fitz Jarndyce's! Now, you know, so very prepossessing in the lady with the veil!”

“If you please, miss,” said Charley, to whom I looked in some astonishment, “Jenny says that when her baby died, you left a handkerchief there, and that she put it away and kept it with the baby's little things. I think, if you please, partly because it was yours, miss, and partly because it had covered the baby.”

“Diminutive,” whispered Miss Flite, making a variety of motions about herown forehead to express intellect in Charley. “Butex-ceedingly sagacious! And so clear! My love, she's clearer than any Counsel I ever heard!”

“Yes, Charley,” I returned. “I remember it. Well?”

“Well, miss,” said Charley, “and that's the handkerchief the lady took. And Jenny wants you to know that she wouldn't have made away with it herself for a heap of money, but that the lady took it, and left some money instead. Jenny don't know her at all, if you please, miss?”

“Why, who can she be?” said I.

“My love,” Miss Flite suggested, advancing her lips to my ear, with her most mysterious look, “in my opinion—don't mention this to our diminutive friend—she's the Lord Chancellor's wife. He's married, you know. And I understand she leads him a terrible life. Throws his lordship's papers into the fire, my dear, if he won't pay the jeweller!”

I did not think very much about this lady then, for I had an impression that it might be Caddy. Besides, my attention was diverted by my visitor, who was cold after her ride, and looked hungry; and who, our dinner being brought in, required some little assistance in arraying herself with great satisfaction in a pitiable old scarf and a much-worn and oftenamended pair of gloves, which she had brought down in a paper parcel. I had to preside, too, over the entertainment, consisting of a dish of fish, a roast fowl, a sweetbread, vegetables, pudding, and Madeira; and it was so pleasant to see how she enjoyed it, and with what state and ceremony she did honor to it, that I was soon thinking of nothing else.

When we had finished, and had our little dessert before us, embellished by the hands of my dear, who would yield the superintendence of everything prepared for me to no one; Miss Flite was so very chatty and happy, that I thought I would lead her to her own history, as she was always pleased to talk about herself. I began by saying “You have attended on the Lord Chancellor many years, Miss Flite?”

“O many, many, many years, my dear. But I expect a judgment. Shortly.”

There was an anxiety even in her hopefulness, that made me doubtful if I had done right in approaching the subject. I thought I would say no more about it.

“My father expected a Judgment,” said Miss Flite. “My brother. My sister. They all expected a Judgment. The same that I expect.”