 name was Jenny Singleton, with Mrs. O'Shocknesy. From their accounts they had began to frame an accusation, which the arrival of Zekiel greatly improved, and which, with its amendments, stood as in Standfast's letter.
These tidings were conveyed to Mr. Gloss, who insinuated them into Sir Sidney's family as opportunity served; and, as fast as one rumour died away, he broached another, that the good baronet might not be suffered to cool.
In this worthy business he found three very useful tools in Musquito, Ego, and Toogood; who remembering, as Emma has told us, their old grudge—especially when revived in its worst lights by Gloss—were continually throwing out some hint to Charles's disadvantage. Musquito said the young fellow was mad, and because he had been tolerably educated, and puffed up with false applause, had, like other spoilt children, thought he could carry all the world before him. Toogood said that he could not have believed a young man of such promising parts would so disgrace all his friends, while

Ego declared that if he had been a young fellow blest with so many advantages, he would have turned out the best creature in the world. In short, Gloss made them play fast and loose, as he pleased, and when they talked in exaggerating terms of his former pranks, he once ventured in a mild way to reprobate the part Sir Sidney had taken in the business of Swash and the taylor, saying he should not wonder to hear his acquiescence upon that occasion quoted as an excuse for the wretch's enormities.
These measures, together with the interception of Charles's letters, which, by the bye, furnished Standfast, who received them, with a most admirable guide to the execution of his schemes, and now and then some cursory intelligence from genglemen just arrived from France, who saw our hero drunk at an inn, or quarrelling in a coffee-house, where he refused, notwithstanding their earnest solicitation, to send any letter or message to England. All these I say worked his utter ruin in the opinion of his friends; and yet, I must do Sir Sidney the justice to say he hesitated against what appeared to be positive conviction till one morning news was brought that Lord Hazard was found shot through the head, and that the act was certainly committed by himself, for one pistol lay close by him, and

another was found loaded in his pocket; and they were the same pair he had bought when he was last in town.
Two days after this melancholy accident John arrived, who wept
