her lady, to beg, if Lord Colambre was BY HIMSELF; he would go to her
dressing-room, as she wished to have a conference with him. He obeyed
her summons.

'Sit down, my dear Colambre--' And she began precisely with her old
sentence--

'With the fortune I brought your father, and with my lord's estate, I
CAWNT understand the meaning of all these pecuniary difficulties; and
all that strange creature Sir Terence says is algebra to me, who speak
English. And I am particularly sorry he was let in this morning--but
he's such a brute that he does not think anything of forcing one's door,
and he tells my footman he does not mind NOT AT HOME a pinch of snuff.
Now what can you do with a man who could say that sort of thing, you
know--the world's at an end.'

'I wish my father had nothing to do with him, ma'am, as much as you can
wish it,' said Lord Colambre; 'but I have said all that a son can with
propriety say, and without effect.'

'What particularly provokes me against him,' continued Lady Clonbrony,
'is what I have just heard from Grace, who was really hurt by it, too,
for she is the warmest friend in the world: I allude to the creature's
indelicate way of touching upon a tender PINT, and mentioning an amiable
young heiress's name. My dear Colambre, I trust you have given me credit
for my inviolable silence all this time upon the PINT nearest my
heart. I am rejoiced to hear you was so warm when she was mentioned
inadvertently by that brute, and I trust you now see the advantages of
the projected union in as strong and agreeable a PINT of view as I do,
my own Colambre; and I should leave things to themselves, and let you
prolong the DEES of courtship as you please, only for what I now hear
incidentally from my lord and the brute, about pecuniary embarrassments,
and the necessity of something being done before next winter. And indeed
I think now, in propriety, the proposal cannot be delayed much longer;
for the world begins to talk of the thing as done; and even Mrs.
Broadhurst, I know, had no doubt that, if this CONTRETEMPS about the
poor Berryls had not occurred, your proposal would have been made before
the end of last week.'

Our hero was not a man to make a proposal because Mrs. Broadhurst
expected it, or to marry because the world said he was going to be
married. He steadily said that, from the first moment the subject had
been mentioned, he had explained himself distinctly; that the young
lady's friends could not,