temper and the constant experience he had had
of the pliability of other men, prepared him to feel the general and
undisguised condemnation into which he was sunk with uncommon emotions
of anger and impatience. That he, at the beam of whose eye every
countenance fell, and to whom in the fierceness of his wrath no one was
daring enough to reply, should now be regarded with avowed dislike, and
treated with unceremonious censure, was a thing he could not endure to
recollect or believe. Symptoms of the universal disgust smote him at
every instant, and at every blow he writhed with intolerable anguish.
His rage was unbounded and raving. He repelled every attack with the
fiercest indignation; while the more he struggled, the more desperate
his situation appeared to become. At length he determined to collect his
strength for a decisive effort, and to meet the whole tide of public
opinion in a single scene.

In pursuance of these thoughts he resolved to repair, without delay, to
the rural assembly which I have already mentioned in the course of my
story. Miss Melville had now been dead one month. Mr. Falkland had been
absent the last week in a distant part of the country, and was not
expected to return for a week longer. Mr. Tyrrel willingly embraced the
opportunity, trusting, if he could now effect his re-establishment, that
he should easily preserve the ground he had gained, even in the face of
his formidable rival. Mr. Tyrrel was not deficient in courage; but he
conceived the present to be too important an epoch in his life to allow
him to make any unnecessary risk in his chance for future ease and
importance.

There was a sort of bustle that took place at his entrance into the
assembly, it having been agreed by the gentlemen of the assembly, that
Mr. Tyrrel was to be refused admittance, as a person with whom they did
not choose to associate. This vote had already been notified to him by
letter by the master of the ceremonies, but the intelligence was rather
calculated, with a man of Mr. Tyrrel's disposition, to excite defiance
than to overawe. At the door of the assembly he was personally met by
the master of the ceremonies, who had perceived the arrival of an
equipage, and who now endeavoured to repeat his prohibition: but he was
thrust aside by Mr. Tyrrel with an air of native authority and ineffable
contempt. As he entered; every eye was turned upon him. Presently all
the gentlemen in the room assembled round him. Some