He was aware that ladies who are no better than they should be are often very clever, so clever, as to make it necessary that the Bozzles who shall at last confound them should be first-rate Bozzles, Bozzles quite at the top of their profession and, therefore, he went about his work with great industry and much caution.  Colonel Osborne was at the present moment in Scotland.  Bozzle was sure of that.  He was quite in the north of Scotland.  Bozzle had examined his map, and had found that Wick, which was the Colonel’s post-town, was very far north indeed.  He had half a mind to run down to Wick, as he was possessed by a certain honest zeal, which made him long to do something hard and laborious; but his experience told him that it was very easy for the Colonel to come up to the neighbourhood of St. Diddulph’s, whereas the lady could not go down to Wick, unless she were to decide upon throwing herself into her lover’s arms, whereby Bozzle’s work would be brought to an end.  He, therefore, confined his immediate operations to St. Diddulph’s.

He made acquaintance with one or two important persons in and about Mr Outhouse’s parsonage.  He became very familiar with the postman.  He arranged terms of intimacy, I am sorry to say, with the housemaid; and, on the third journey, he made an alliance with the potboy at the Full Moon.  The potboy remembered well the fact of the child being brought to ’our ‘ouse,’ as he called the Full Moon; and he was enabled to say, that the same ‘gent as had brought the boy backards and forrards,’ had since that been at the parsonage.  But Bozzle was quite quick enough to perceive that all this had nothing to do with the Colonel.  He was led, indeed, to fear that his ‘governor,’ as he was in the habit of calling Trevelyan in his half-spoken soliloquies, that his governor was not as true to him as he was to his governor.  What business had that meddling fellow Stanbury at St. Diddulph’s? for Trevelyan had not thought it necessary to tell his satellite that he had quarrelled with his friend.  Bozzle was grieved in his mind when he learned that Stanbury’s interference was still to be dreaded; and wrote to his governor, rather severely, to that effect; but, when so writing, he was able to give no further information.  Facts, in such cases, will not unravel themselves without much patience on the part of the investigators.

CHAPTER XXXIV

PRISCILLA’S WISDOM

On the night after the dinner party in the Close, Dorothy was not the only person in the house who laid awake thinking of what had taken place.  Miss Stanbury also was full of anxiety, and for hour after hour could not sleep as she remembered the fruitlessness of her efforts on behalf of her nephew and niece.