 per annum into the plural. He told me she
was a grand kind of woman, past advising.«
    »For what amount?«
    »Some thousands, I think it was.«
    »She has no money«: Lady Wathin corrected her emphasis: »or ought to have
none.«
    »She can't have got it from him.«
    »Did you notice her Christian name?«
    »I don't recollect it, if I did. I thought the woman a donkey.«
    »Would you consider me a busybody were I to try to mitigate this woman's
evil influence? I love dear Constance, and should be happy to serve her.«
    »I want my girl married,« said old Quintin. »He's one of my Parliamentary
chiefs, with first-rate prospects; good family, good sober fellow - at least I
thought so; by nature, I mean; barring your incantations. He suits me, she
liking him.«
    »She admires him, I am sure.«
    »She's dead on end for the fellow!«
    Lady Wathin felt herself empowered by Quintin Manx to undertake the release
of sweet Constance Asper's knight from the toils of his enchantress. For this
purpose she had first an interview with Mr. Warwick, and next she hurried to
Lady Dunstane at Copsley. There, after jumbling Mr. Warwick's connubial
dispositions and Mrs. Warwick's last book, and Mr. Percy Dacier's engagement to
the great heiress in a gossipy hotch-potch, she contrived to gather a few items
of fact, as that THE YOUNG MINISTER was probably modelled upon Mr. Percy Dacier.
Lady Dunstane made no concealment of it as soon as she grew sensible of the
angling. But she refused her help to any reconciliation between Mr. and Mrs.
Warwick. She declined to listen to Lady Wathin's entreaties. She declined to
give her reasons. - These bookworm women, whose pride it is to fancy that they
can think for themselves, have a great deal of the heathen in them, as morality
discovers when it wears the enlistment ribands and applies to them to win
recruits for a service under the direct blessing of Providence.
    Lady Wathin left some darts behind her, in the form of moral exclamations;
and really intended morally. For though she did not like Mrs. Warwick, she had
no wish to wound, other than by stopping her further studies of the Young
Minister, and conducting him to the young lady loving him, besides restoring a
bereft husband to his own.
