"I don't say that; but at this hour I am seldom at leisure--not but what
I am always at the service of a constituent, that is, a voter! Mr.--, I
beg your pardon, I did not catch your name."

"Sir," said the stranger, helping himself to a third glass of wine;
"here's a health to your young folk! And now to business." Here the
visitor, drawing his chair nearer to his host, assuming a more grave
aspect, and dropping something of his stilted pronunciation, continued,
"You had a brother?"

"Well, sir," said Mr. Beaufort, with a very changed countenance.

"And that brother had a wife!"

Had a cannon gone off in the ear of Mr. Robert Beaufort, it could not
have shocked or stunned him more than that simple word with which his
companion closed his sentence. He fell back in his chair--his lips
apart, his eyes fixed on the stranger. He sought to speak, but his
tongue clove to his mouth.

"That wife had two sons, born in wedlock!"

"It is false!" cried Mr. Beaufort, finding a voice at length, and
springing to his feet. "And who are you, sir? and what do you mean
by--"

"Hush!" said the stranger, perfectly unconcerned, and regaining the
dignity of his haw-haw enunciation, "better not let the servants hear
aunything. For my pawt, I think servants hauve the longest pair of ears