WYLDER'S HAJVD.
245
den rang out merry peals throughout the day, and the
town was tastefully decorated with flags, and brilliantly
illuminated at night."
There was some more which I need not copy, being very
like what we usually see on such occasions.
I read this piece of intelligence half a dozen times over
during breakfast. "How that beautiful girl has thrown
herself away!" I thought. "Surely the Chelfords, who
have an influence there, ought to have exerted it to pre-
vent her doing any thing so mad.
"At the club, I saw it in the " Morning Post; " and
an hour after, old Job Gabloss, that prosy Argus who
knows every thing, recounted the details with patient pre-
cision, and in legal phrase, "put in" letters from two or
three country houses proving his statement.
So there was no doubting it longer; and Captain Stan-
ley Lake, late of her Majesty's — Regiment of Guards,
idler, scamp, coxcomb, and the beautiful Dorcas Brandon,
heiress of Brandon, were man and wife.
The posture of affairs in the small world of Gylingden,
except in the matter of the alliance just referred to, was
not much changed.
Since the voluminous despatch from Marseilles, promis-
ing his return so soon, not a line had been received from
Mark Wylder. In the meantime, Captain Lake accepted
the trust. Larkin at times thought there was a constant
and secret correspondence going on between him and
Mark Wylder, and that he was his agent in adjusting
some complicated and villanous piece of diplomacy by
means of the fund — secret-service money — which Mark
had placed at his disposal.
Sometimes his suspicions took a different turn, and he
thought that Lake might be one of those " persecutors"
of whom Mark spoke with such mysterious hatred; and