he toilet,
from the patent boot-jack with its silver mountings, to the superb
dressing-case, glittering with gold and crystal, everything was perfect
in its sumptuousness. In his own house, this old man was given up to
self-worship, without a shadow of concealment. In society the graceful
hypocrisy of his deportment was beautiful to contemplate, like any other
exhibition of the highest art. If benevolence was the fashion, then
General Harrington was the perfection of philanthropy. Nay, as it was
his ambition to lead, the exemplary gentleman sometimes made a little
exertion to render benevolence the rage! His name often lead in
committees for charity festivals, and he was particularly interested in
seeing that the funds were distributed with the most distinguished
elegance, and by ladies sure to dignify humanity by distributing the
munificence of the fashionable world in flowing silks and immaculate
white gloves.

After this fashion, the General was a distinguished philanthropist.
Indeed, humanity presents few conditions of elegant selfishness in which
he was not prominent. A tyrant in his own household, he had, from his
youth up, been the veriest slave to the world in which he moved. Its
homage was essential to his happiness. He could not entirely cheat his
astute mind into a belief of his own perfections, without the constant
acclamations of society. As he grew old, this assurance became more and
more essential to his self-complacency.

The General studied a good deal. His mind was naturally of more than
ordinary power, and it was necessary that he should keep up with the
discoveries and literature of the day, in order to shine as a savant,
and belles-lettres scholar. Thus some three or four hours of every day
were spent in his library, and few professional men studied harder to
secure position in life, than he did to accumulate knowledge which had
no object higher than self-gratulation.

Still, with all his selfishness and want of true principle, the General
was, at least, by education, a gentleman, and he would at any time have
found it much easier to force himself into an act of absolute
wickedness, than to be thought guilty of ill-breeding in any of its
forms. In short, with General Harrington, habit stood in the place of
principle. He possessed few of those high passions that lead men into
rash or wicked deeds, and never was guilty of wrong without knowing it.

Unconsciously to herself, Agnes Barker had wounde