nt)
inadvertently broke off the foot of a marble cherub, weeping its
alabaster tears, at the angle of a monument to the memory of a certain
Sir Wilfred Altham, of the time of James II., in raising the woodwork
of a pew occupied by Mr Sparks's family, the rage of Sir Laurence was
so excessive as to be almost deserving of a strait-waistcoat.

The enmity of the baronet was all the more painful to himself that he
felt it to be harmless against its object. In every way, Lexley Park
had the best of it. Jonas Sparks was not only rich in a noble income,
but in a charming wife and promising family. Every thing prospered
with him; and, as to mere inferiority of precedence, it was well known
that he had refused a baronetcy; and many people even surmised that,
so soon as he was able to purchase another borough, and give a seat in
Parliament to his second son, as well as resign his own to the eldest,
he would be promoted to the Upper House.

The only means of vengeance, therefore, possessed by the vindictive
man whose follies and vices had been the means of creating this
perpetual scourge to his pride, was withholding from him the purchase
of the remaining lands indispensable to the completion of his estate,
more especially as regarded the water-courses, which, at Lexley Park,
were commanded by the sluices of the higher grounds of the Hall; and
mighty was the oath sworn by Sir Laurence, that come what might,
however great his exigencies or threatening his poverty, nothing
should induce him to dispose of another acre to Jonas Sparks. He was
even at the trouble of executing a will, in order to introduce a
clause imposing the same reservation upon the man to whom he devised
his small remaining property--the heir-at-law, to whom, had he died
intestate, it would have descended without conditions.

"The Congleton shopkeepers," muttered he, (whenever, in his solitary
evening rides, he caught sight of the rich plate-glass windows of the
new mansion, burnished by the setting sun,) "shall never, never lord
it under the roof of my forefathers! Wherever else he may set his
plebeian foot, Lexley Hall shall be sacred. Rather see the old place
burned to the ground--rather set fire to it with my own hands--than
conceive that, when I am in my grave, it could possibly be subjected
to the rule of such a barbarian!"

For it had reached the ears of Sir Laurence--of course, with all the
exaggeration derived from passing through the medium of village