"
"I crave your honour's pardon. The girl was in earnest enough when she
smashed your carriage window with the heel of her shoe and leaped out
like a young filly clearing a five barred gate."
"Pest! Don't remind me of that. It makes me sick when I think how I was
fooled and that you were such an ass as to let her slip."
"Sir, I did my best and but for the spark who had the impudence to
thrust his nose into what didn't concern him, I'd have had her safe. But
I've made amends. I've run her to earth."
"Satan's helped you then. Where is she?"
"At her mother's house in the Old Bailey."
"That's a lie."
"Sir!"
"I tell you it's a lie. Her mother visited me at my chambers yesterday.
She'd got the story pat of Lavinia's running away with me from school
and all the rest of it. The old woman's not much better than Mother
Needham. Faith, she's a shade worse. She agreed to let me have the girl
for fifty guineas. She'd got the chit locked up she said. I went to her
Old Bailey hovel to-day--gad, I've got the smell of the cooked meats and
boiled greens in my nostrils at this minute--and damn it, she said the
girl had run away. And now you tell me she's there."
"I do, sir. With these eyes which I flatter myself don't often mistake
when they rest on a well turned ankle, a trim waist and a pretty face. I
swear I saw her go into the house."
"Ecod, I suppose I must believe you," rejoined Dorrimore sullenly.
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