heart.

"How proud," renewed Tomlinson, "the good old matron at Thames Court
would be if you married a lady! You have not seen her lately?"

"Not for years," answered our hero. "Poor old soul! I believe that she
is well in health, and I take care that she should not be poor in
pocket."

"But why not visit her? Perhaps, like all great men, especially of a
liberal turn of mind, you are ashamed of old friends, eh?"

"My good fellow, is that like me? Why, you know the beaux of our set
look askant on me for not keeping up my dignity, robbing only in company
with well-dressed gentlemen, and swindling under the name of a lord's
nephew. No, my reasons are these: first, you must know, that the old
dame had set her heart on my turning out an honest man."

"And so you have," interrupted Augustus,--"honest to your party; what
more would you have from either prig or politician?"

"I believe," continued Clifford, not heeding the interruption, "that my
poor mother, before she died, desired that I might be reared honestly;
and strange as it may seem to you, Dame Lobkins is a conscientious woman
in her own way,--it is not her fault if I have turned out as I have done.
Now I know well that it would grieve her to the quick to see me what I
am. Secondly, my friend, under my new names, various as they are,--
Jackson and Howard, Russell and Pigwiggin, Villiers and Gotobed,
Cavendish and Solomons,--you may well suppose that the good persons in
the neighbourhood of Thames Court have no suspicion that the adventurous