Three weeks had nearly glided by, and still no tidings of Mr. Ferret. Mrs. Grainger, and her sister Emily Dalston, a very charming person, had called repeatedly; but as I of course had nothing to communicate, they were still condemned to languish under the heart-sickness caused by hope deferred. At last our emissary made his wished-for appearance.
"Well, Mr. Ferret," said I, on entering my library, where I found him composedly awaiting my arrival, "what success?"
"Why, nothing of much consequence as yet," replied he; "I am, you know, only, as it were, just commencing the investigation. The Leeds parson that married them is dead, and the old clerk is paralytic, and has lost his memory. If, however, they were both alive, and in sound health of mind and body, they could, I fancy, help us but little, as Bilston tells me neither the Dalstons nor Grainger had ever entered the church till the morning of the wedding; and they soon afterwards removed to Cumberland, so that it is scarcely possible either parson or clerk could prove that Violet Dalston was married to Sir Harry Compton. A very intelligent fellow is Bilston: he was present at the marriage, you remember; and a glorious witness, if he had only something of importance to depose to; powdered hair and a pigtail, double chin, and six feet in girth at least; highly respectable--capital witness, very--only, unfortunately, he can only testify that a person calling himself Grainger married Violet Dalston; not much in that!"
"So, then, your three weeks' labor has been entirely thrown away!"
"Not so fast--not so fast--you jump too hastily at conclusions. The Cumberland fellow that sold Grainger the house--only the equity of redemption of it, by the way--there's a large mortgage on it--can prove nothing. Nobody about there can, except the surgeon; _he_ can prove Mrs. Grainger's _accouchement_--that is something. I have been killing myself every evening this last week with grog and tobacco smoke at the "Compton Arms," in the company of the castle servants, and if the calves' heads _had_ known anything essential, I fancy I should have wormed it out of them. They have, however, kindly furnished me with a scrawl of introduction to the establishment now in town, some of whom I shall have the honor to meet, in the character of an out-and-out liberal sporting gentleman, at the "Albemarle Arms" this evening. I want to get hold of his confidential valet, if he had one--those go-a-head fellows generally have--a Swiss, or some other foreign animal."