her position and mine.  She would be her own mistress, and share the profits with me, while she wanted money, and while it suited her to go on.  So far so good.  But the reason she added next, for her flattering preference of myself, was less to my taste.  “The music-seller is not the man whom I employ to make my inquiries,” she said.  “You are the man.”  I don’t like her steadily remembering those inquiries, in the first bewilderment of her success.  It looks ill for the future; it looks infernally ill for the future.

V.

Chronicle for January, 1847.

She has shown the cloven foot already.  I begin to be a little afraid of her.

On the conclusion of the Nottingham engagement (the results of which more than equaled the results at Derby), I proposed taking the entertainment next—­now we had got it into our own hands—­to Newark.  Miss Vanstone raised no objection until we came to the question of time, when she amazed me by stipulating for a week’s delay before we appeared in public again.

“For what possible purpose?” I asked.

“For the purpose of making the inquiries which I mentioned to you at York,” she answered.

I instantly enlarged on the danger of delay, putting all the considerations before her in every imaginable form.  She remained perfectly immovable.  I tried to shake her on the question of expenses.  She answered by handing me over her share of the proceeds at Derby and Nottingham—­and there were my expenses paid, at the rate of nearly two guineas a day.  I wonder who first picked out a mule as the type of obstinacy?  How little knowledge that man must have had of women!

There was no help for it.  I took down my instructions in black and white, as usual.  My first exertions were to be directed to the discovery of Mr. Michael Vanstone’s address:  I was also expected to find out how long he was likely to live there, and whether he had sold Combe-Raven or not.  My next inquiries were to inform me of his ordinary habits of life; of what he did with his money; of who his intimate friends were; and of the sort of terms on which his son, Mr. Noel Vanstone, was now living with him.  Lastly, the investigations were to end in discovering whether there was any female relative, or any woman exercising domestic authority in the house, who was known to have an influence over either father or son.

If my long practice in cultivating the field of human sympathy had not accustomed me to private investigations into the affairs of other people, I might have found some of these queries rather difficult to deal with in the course of a week.  As it was, I gave myself all the benefit of my own experience, and brought the answers back to Nottingham in a day less than the given time.  Here they are, in regular order, for convenience of future reference: 

(1.) Mr. Michael Vanstone is now residing at German Place, Brighton, and likely to remain there, as he finds the air suits him.  He reached London from Switzerland in September last; and sold the Combe-Raven property immediately on his arrival.