, with all her
experience of the villany of man, had never conceived the wretch to be
so thoroughly beyond the reach of redemption as when Dr. Riccabocca took
his leave, and once more interred himself amidst the solitudes of the
Casino, without having made any formal renunciation of his criminal
celibacy. For some days she shut herself up in her own chamber, and
brooded with more than her usual gloomy satisfaction on the certainty of
the approaching crash. Indeed, many signs of that universal calamity
which, while the visit of Riccabocca lasted, she had permitted herself
to consider ambiguous, now became luminously apparent. Even the
newspaper, which during that credulous and happy period had given half a
column to births and marriages, now bore an ominously long catalogue of
deaths; so that it seemed as if the whole population had lost heart, and
had no chance of repairing its daily losses. The leading articles spoke,
with the obscurity of a Pythian, of an impending CRISIS. Monstrous
turnips sprouted out from the paragraphs devoted to general news. Cows
bore calves with two heads, whales were stranded in the Humber, showers
of frogs descended in the High-street of Cheltenham.

All these symptoms of the world's decrepitude and consummation, which by
the side of the fascinating Riccabocca might admit of some doubt is to
their origin and cause, now, conjoined with the worst of all, viz.--the
frightfully progressive wickedness of man--left to Miss Jemima no ray of
hope save that afforded by the reflection that she could contemplate the
wreck of matter without a single sentiment of regret.

Mrs. Dale, however, by no means shared the despondency of her fair
friend, and, having gained access to Miss Jemima's chamber, succeeded,
though not without difficulty, in her kindly attempts to cheer the
drooping spirits of that female philanthropist. Nor, in her benevolent
desire to speed the car of Miss Jemima to its hymenial goal, was Mrs.
Dale so cruel towards her male friend, Dr. Riccabocca, as she seemed to
her husband. For Mrs. Dale was a woman of shrewdness and penetration, as
most quick-tempered women are; and she knew that Miss Jemima was one of
those excellent young ladies who are likely to value a husband in
proportion to the difficulty of obtaining him. In fact, my readers of
both sexes must often have met, in the course of their experience, with
that peculiar sort of feminine disposition, which requires the warmth of
the