Dilemmas of Pride, (Vol 3 of 3)

r beside his bottle of port stood an ink-bottle; amid walnut-shells and remnants of biscuit lay sundry long-shaped folded papers, and though he held a

subp?na Lady Ar

Alfred had actually made proposals to and been accepted by Lady Caroline, the very day before his brothe

, which it may be remembered he once overheard, between Lady Arden and

uld be any use in sending subp?nas

me out on their examination, rather calculated to raise a doubt in the mind

d they g

h of Sir Willoughby; immediat

brought forward on the

Sir Alfred, I should think that he was not at all aware th

Now 'tis well and wisely said, that a man, for his own sake, should have no secrets either from his doctor or his law

d him to believe he should be. Now, I naturally thought that such an idea being promulgated, might suggest the possibility of Sir Willoughby's having taken the poison himself; which id

aw that Geoffery was playing an underhand game, "I under

e-those I have

have said, he did not wish to put himself absolutely in Fips's

ous, and believed himself to be a favoured lover. I do not mean to say, that either this or Lady Arden's evidence would be any proof of Sir Alfred's guilt; but, by adding the incenti

to his office-for he was a labourer at his vocation, late, as well as early-while Geoffery, whom the strains

her voice a made one. He had found it impossible to give her either ear or taste; while the unshrinking audacity with which she caricatured a bravura, gave to her performance the semblance of having been got up on purpose for a burlesque: a stranger would seriously have thought, that the most polite thing they could do was to stand

then, but that of unqualified disgust, could such a display as we have just described have been witnessed; while Geoffer

gratified vanity. The child happened to be very beautiful; to which his attention was particularly drawn, by the circumstance of his being often obliged, for want of mother or nurse-maid, to walk out with it himself. When he did so, almost every one they met would turn to look or to make some comment as they passed. Sometimes, groups would stop and speak to the child; kiss it, ask it to shake hands, &c. On such occasions Fips would stop also, and becoming imboldened, desire his little girl to look up, and show its pretty eyes; to laugh, and show its pretty teeth; then, its pretty mouth, its rosy lips, its lovely colour, its beautiful skin, its pretty curls, its pretty foot, would

the young lady came home the perfect singer of Italian bravuras, performance of which we have just witnessed; and furthermore imbued with a thorough contempt for her vulgar, and except in the chicanery of the law, ignorant fath

, let them be ever so clumsy in every thing else, have

of open-work embroidery, the slippers scarlet, the hat (not bonnet) yellow crape, adorned with white blond and pink ostrich feathers tipped with scarlet. She also wore, flung across one shoulder, and hung over the contrary arm, a long flying canary-coloured scarf, and held perpendicularly above her head, that it might neither conceal nor derange

I beg, sir, you'll mind your parchments, and g

y dear, follow

sir, you may

rom a combination of circumstances: in the first place, Fips had little time for recreation, and if he had had more, his dutiful daughter would not have been fond of appearing with so unwieldly and unsightly a companion. As to other young women, Miss Fips, proud of her beauty, and the fortune she was taught to expect, treated those in her own sphere with impertinence, while it was very improbable that ladies in a sphere

sty is more than a presumption both of want of heart and want of taste or genius; because it is a proof of the absence of that susceptibility-that acuteness of moral perception, the p

town. She quarrelled with the neighbours-insulted the boarder clerks-and scolded the servants; and when Fips was too busy with his own, if not more amiable, at least more important avocations, to join her in pouring forth invectives aga

nd why? Because his daughter, undutiful and disrespectful though she was, happened to be the part and portion of himself, in which his vanity, his ambition, his pride had centered; and his selfishness, when he remembered that he could not carry his riches with him to t