ack somewhat confused, and a shrill female voice
called out from the eating-room, in a half-laughing, half-wrathful tone,
"Come back, you combustious creturs! Come back, I tell ye, or I'll tell
your Pa when he comes in. Let alone your sisters, do, Watty, dear! or
you'll tear their tails again, as you did yesterday, wi' them there
nasty spurs!" My inclination to laugh was overpowered by sensations of a
very different nature as I hurried past the scene of uproarious
vulgarity, and I rode away from the old Hall, with a full heart,
well-nigh lamenting that the last lineal descendants of the Devereuxs
had lived so long as to witness its desecration.

From that day forward.... But I should tell you that my dear wife gave
her ready assent to the engagement I had ventured to make for both of
us, though she accompanied me next day to the Hall in painful
expectation of witnessing the annoyance and distress of our valued
friends. But the perfect good-breeding of Mr Devereux and his sister,
especially the dignified self-possession of Mrs Eleanor, prevented all
outward manifestation of what must have been the inward feeling. We
found them assembled in the drawing-room with their uncongenial guests,
and two neighbouring gentlemen, old bachelor friends of Mr Devereux,
who had dropt in uninvited to dinner. We were previously acquainted
with Mr Heneage, but were, of course, introduced to his lady and her
daughters, and Walter Heneage Devereux, jun., who bobbed his chin into
the depths of his starched cravat in the most approved style of dandy
vulgarity--and Mrs and Misses Heneages! Heavens! that such masses of
coarseness, finery, and ignorant assumption, should have borne in common
with our venerable friends the honoured name of Devereux! It was my
office (Mr Devereux having led out my wife) to conduct Mrs Heneage to
the dining-room; and had my feelings been less painfully excited, I
should have been amused at her evidently first attempt at the assumption
of aristocratical ease and urbanity, as, thrusting her huge thick arm
through mine up to the elbow, she leant on me with a weight that would
have annihilated the fragile frame of our venerable host, and must have
left on my arm the impression of the gilt jack-chain she wore by way of
bracelet.

Ludicrous as was throughout the day the deportment of these incongruous
personages, the remembrance of it is, even now, too painful, as
connected with the distress and humiliated feelings of my