“Ye don’t say so, sir!” said she.  “Well, I see your heart is good” (the first time he had ever been told that), “and so I’ve a mind to risk it.”

Then she quickly clapped on ten shillings a week more for color, and he was installed.  He washed his face, and then the woman conceived hopes of him, and expressed them in rustic fashion.  “Well,” said she, “dirt is a disguise.  Now I look at you, you have got more mischief to do in the world yet, I do believe.”

“A deal more, I hope,” said he.

It now occurred to him, all of a sudden, that really he was not in good health, and that he had difficulties before him which required calm nerves, and that nerves are affected by the stomach.  So, not to throw a chance away, he had the sense and the resolution to devote a few days to health and unwholesome meditation.

This is a discordant world:  even vices will not always pull the same way.  Here was a sinister villain distracted between avarice and revenge, and sore puzzled which way to turn.  Of course he could expose the real parentage of Mary Bartley, and put both Bartley and Hope to shame, and then the Cliffords would make Bartley disgorge the L20,000.  But he, Monckton, would not make a shilling by that, and it would be a weak revenge on Bartley, who could now spare L20,000, and no revenge at all on Hope, for Hope was now well-to-do, and would most likely be glad to get his daughter back.  Then, on the other hand, he could easily frighten Bartley into giving him L5000 to keep dark, but in that case he must forego his vengeance on Hope.

This difficulty had tormented Monckton all along; but now Mrs. Dawson had revealed another obstacle.  Young Clifford and Mary in love with each other.  What Mrs. Easton saw as a friend, with her good mother-wit, this man saw in a moment as an enemy, viz., that this new combination dwarfed the L20,000 altogether.  Monckton had no idea that his unknown antagonist Nurse Easton had married the pair, but the very attachment, as the chatter-box of the Dun Cow described it, was a bitter pill to him.  “Who could have foreseen this?” said he.  “It’s devilish.”  We did not ourselves intend our readers to feel it so, or we would not have spent so much time over it.  But as regards that one adjective, Mr. Monckton is a better authority than we are.  He had a document with him that, skillfully used, might make mischief for a time between these lovers.  But he foresaw there could be no permanent result without the personal assistance of Mrs. Braham.  That he could have commanded fourteen years ago, but now he felt how difficult it would be.  He would have to threaten and torment her almost to madness before she would come down to Derbyshire and declare that this Walter Clifford was the Walter Clifford of the certificate, and that she was his discarded wife.  But Monckton was none the less resolved she should come if necessary.  Leaving him varius distractum vitiis, and weighing every scheme, with its pros and cons, and, like a panther crouching and watching before he would make his first spring, we will now bring our other characters up to the same point, and that will not take us long, for during the months we have skipped there were not many events, and Mrs. Dawson has told the readers some of them, and the rest were only detached incidents.