. He told me
that I did not dare to quarrel with him because of the account he kept
at our house. I should like to have massacred him! She has told him that
I struck her,--the insolent brute--he says he will tell it at my clubs;
and threatens personal violence to me, there, if I do it again. Lady
Kew, I'm not safe from that man and that woman," cries poor Barnes, in
an agony of terror.

"Fighting is Jack Belsize's business, Barnes Newcome; banking is yours,
luckily," said the dowager. "As old Lord Highgate was to die and his
eldest son, too, it is a pity certainly they had not died a year or two
earlier, and left poor Clara and Charles to come together. You should
have married some woman in the serious way; my daughter Walham could
have found you one. Frank, I am told, and his wife go on very sweetly
together; her mother-in-law governs the whole family. They have turned
the theatre back into a chapel again: they have six little ploughboys
dressed in surplices to sing the service; and Frank and the Vicar of
Kewbury play at cricket with them on holidays. Stay, why should not
Clara go to Kewbury?"

"She and her sister have quarrelled about this very affair with Lord
Highgate. Some time ago it appears they had words about it and when I
told Kew that bygones had best be bygones, that Highgate was very sweet
upon Ethel now, and that I did not choose to lose such a good account as
his, Kew was very insolent to me; his conduct was blackguardly, ma'am,
quite blackguardly, and you may be sure but for our relationship I would
have called him to----"

Here the talk between Barnes and his ancestress was interrupted by the
appearance of Miss Ethel Newcome, taper in hand, who descended from the
upper regions enveloped in a shawl.

"How do you do, Barnes? How is Clara? I long to see my little nephew. Is
he like his pretty papa?" cries the young lady, giving her fair cheek to
her brother.

"Scotland has agreed with our Newcome rose," says Barnes, gallantly. "My
dear Ethel, I never saw you in greater beauty."

"By the light of one bedroom candle! what should I be if the whole
room were lighted? You would see my face then was covered all over
with wrinkles, and quite pale and woebegone, with the dreariness of the
Scotch journey. Oh, what a time we have spent! haven't we, grandmamma? I
never wish to go to a great castle again; above all, I never wish to
go to a little shooting-box. Scotland may be very well for men; but
for women--