, when he had a job; but such customers as came were
rather for Secundra, and the Master's sewing would be more in the manner of
Penelope's. He could never have designed to gain even butter to his bread by
such a means of livelihood: enough for him that there was the name of Durie
dragged in the dirt on the placard, and the sometime heir of that proud family
set up cross-legged in public for a reproach upon his brother's meanness. And in
so far his device succeeded that there was murmuring in the town and a party
formed highly inimical to my lord. My lord's favour with the Governor laid him
more open on the other side; my lady (who was never so well received in the
colony) met with painful innuendoes; in a party of women, where it would be the
topic most natural to introduce, she was almost debarred from the naming of
needle-work; and I have seen her return with a flushed countenance, and vow that
she would go abroad no more.
    In the meanwhile my lord dwelled in his decent mansion, immersed in farming;
a popular man with his intimates, and careless or unconscious of the rest. He
laid on flesh; had a bright, busy face; even the heat seemed to prosper with
him; and my lady - in despite of her own annoyances - daily blessed Heaven her
father should have left her such a paradise. She had looked on from a window
upon the Master's humiliation; and from that hour appeared to feel at ease. I
was not so sure myself; as time went on, there seemed to me a something not
quite wholesome in my lord's condition. Happy he was, beyond a doubt, but the
grounds of this felicity were secret; even in the bosom of his family he brooded
with manifest delight upon some private thought; and I conceived at last the
suspicion (quite unworthy of us both) that he kept a mistress somewhere in the
town. Yet he went little abroad, and his day was very fully occupied; indeed,
there was but a single period, and that pretty early in the morning, while Mr.
Alexander was at his lesson-book, of which I was not certain of the disposition.
It should be borne in mind, in the defence of that which I now did, that I was
always in some fear my lord was not quite justly in his reason; and with our
enemy sitting so still in the same town with us, I did well to be upon my guard.
Accordingly