dropped off one by one into sweet forgetfulness; so that when the
rising sun of December looked through the painted windows on
mouldering embers and flickering lamps, the vaulted roof was
echoing to a mellifluous concert of noses, from the clarionet of
the waiting-boy at one end of the hall, to the double bass of the
Reverend Doctor, ringing over the empty punch-bowl, at the other.



CONCLUSION



From this eventful night, young Crotchet was seen no more on
English mould. Whither he had vanished was a question that could
no more be answered in his case than in that of King Arthur after
the battle of Camlan. The great firm of Catchflat and Company
figured in the Gazette, and paid sixpence in the pound; and it was
clear that he had shrunk from exhibiting himself on the scene of
his former greatness, shorn of the beams of his paper prosperity.
Some supposed him to be sleeping among the undiscoverable secrets
of some barbel-pool in the Thames; but those who knew him best were
more inclined to the opinion that he had gone across the Atlantic,
with his pockets full of surplus capital, to join his old
acquaintance, Mr. Touchandgo, in the bank of Dotandcarryonetown.

Lady Clarinda was more sorry for her father's disappointment than
her own; but she had too much pride to allow herself to be put up a
second time in the money-market; and when the Captain renewed his
assiduities, her old partiality for him, combining with a sense of