said that he was fairly discarded,
but the very appearance of the good miller, anxious to improve the
opportunity for his protege, had been sufficient to determine his cousin
to reinstate Mr. Adolphus in her good graces. Whether she really liked
him is doubtful. He entertained too good an opinion of himself to be
very successful in gaining that of other people.

That the gentleman was not deficient in "left-handed wisdom," was
proved pretty clearly by most of his actions; for instance, when routed
by the downright miller from the position which he had taken up of a
near kinsman by the father's side, he, like an able tactician, wheeled
about and called cousins with Mrs. Deborah's mother; and as that good
lady happened to have borne the very general, almost universal, name of
Smith, which is next to anonymous, even John Stokes could not dislodge
him from that entrenchment But he was not always so dexterous. Cunning
in him lacked the crowning perfection of hiding itself under the
appearance of honesty. His art never looked like nature. It stared
you in the face, and could not deceive the dullest observer. His very
flattery had a tone of falseness that affronted the person flattered;
and Mrs. Deborah, in particular, who did not want for shrewdness, found
it so distasteful, that she would certainly have discarded him upon
that one ground of offence, had not her love of power been unconsciously
propitiated by the perception of the efforts which he made, and the
degradation to which he submitted, in the vain attempt to please her.
She liked the homage offered to "_les beaux yeux de sa cassette_" pretty
much as a young beauty likes the devotion extorted by her charms, and
for the sake of the incense tolerated the worshipper.

Nevertheless there were moments when the conceit which I have mentioned
as the leading characteristic of Mr. Adolphus Lynfield had well nigh
banished him from Chalcott. Piquing himself on the variety and extent
of his knowledge, the universality of his genius, he of course paid
the penalty of other universal geniuses, by being in no small degree
superficial. Not content with understanding every trade better than
those who had followed it all their lives, he had a most unlucky
propensity to put his devices into execution, and as his information
was, for the most part, picked up from the column headed "varieties,"
in the county newspaper, where of course there is some chaff mingled
with the grain, and as th