ic thought
he ought to be well pleased; but the public were disappointed to see
that he did not show any of the gratification they supposed him to
feel.

The truth was, that he had met with so many small mortifications
during the progress of the election, that the pleasure which he would
otherwise have felt in the final success of his scheme was much
diminished.

He had more than tacitly sanctioned bribery; and now that the
excitement was over, he regretted it; not entirely from conscientious
motives, though he was uneasy from a slight sense of wrong-doing; but
he was more pained, after all, to think that, in the eyes of some of
his townsmen, his hitherto spotless character had received a blemish.
He, who had been so stern and severe a censor on the undue influence
exercised by the opposite party in all preceding elections, could not
expect to be spared by their adherents now, when there were rumours
that the hands of the scrupulous Dissenters were not clean. Before,
it had been his boast that neither friend nor enemy could say one
word against him; now, he was constantly afraid of an indictment for
bribery, and of being compelled to appear before a Committee to swear
to his own share in the business.

His uneasy, fearful consciousness made him stricter and sterner
than ever; as if he would quench all wondering, slanderous talk
about him in the town by a renewed austerity of uprightness; that
the slack-principled Mr Bradshaw of one month of ferment and
excitement might not be confounded with the highly-conscientious and
deeply-religious Mr Bradshaw, who went to chapel twice a day, and
gave a hundred pounds a-piece to every charity in the town, as a sort
of thank-offering that his end was gained.

But he was secretly dissatisfied with Mr Donne. In general, that
gentleman had been rather too willing to act in accordance with
any one's advice, no matter whose; as if he had thought it too
much trouble to weigh the wisdom of his friends, in which case Mr
Bradshaw's would have, doubtless, proved the most valuable. But
now and then he unexpectedly, and utterly without reason, took the
conduct of affairs into his own hands, as when he had been absent
without leave only just before the day of nomination. No one guessed
whither he had gone; but the fact of his being gone was enough to
chagrin Mr Bradshaw, who was quite ready to pick a quarrel on this
very head, if the election had not terminated favourably. As it
was, he h