come family,
and after the first agonies of grief for his father's death had
subsided, he made strong attempts to conciliate the principal persons in
the neighbourhood, and to render himself popular in the borough. He gave
handsome entertainments to the townsfolk and to the county gentry; he
tried even to bring those two warring classes together. He endeavoured
to be civil to the Newcome Independent, the Opposition paper, as well as
to the Newcome Sentinel that true old Uncompromising Blue. He asked the
Dissenting clergyman to dinner, and the Low Church clergyman, as well
as the orthodox Doctor Bulders and his curates. He gave a lecture at
the Newcome Athenaeum, which everybody said was very amusing, and
which Sentinel and Independent both agreed in praising. Of course he
subscribed to that statue which the Newcomites were raising; to the
philanthropic missions which Reverend Low Church gentlemen were engaged
in; to the (for the young Newcomite manufacturers are as sporting as
any gents in the North), to the hospital, the People's Library, the
restoration of the rood-screen and the great painted window in Newcome
Old Church (Rev. J. Bulders), and he had to pay in fine a most awful
price for his privilege of sitting in Parliament as representative of
his native place--as he called it in his speeches "the cradle of his
forefathers, the home of his race," etc., though Barnes was in fact born
at Clapham.

Lady Clara could not in the least help this young statesman in his
designs upon Newcome and the Newcomites. After she came into Barnes's
hands, a dreadful weight fell upon her. She would smile and simper,
and talk kindly and gaily enough at first, during Sir Brian's life; and
among women, when Barnes was not present. But as soon as he joined the
company, it was remarked that his wife became silent, and looked eagerly
towards him whenever he ventured to speak. She blundered, her eyes
filled with tears; the little wit she had left her in her husband's
presence: he grew angry, and tried to hide his anger with a sneer,
or broke out with gibe and an oath, when he lost patience, and Clara,
whimpering, would leave the room. Everybody at Newcome knew that Barnes
bullied his wife.

People had worse charges against Barnes than wife-bullying. Do you
suppose that little interruption which occurred at Barnes's marriage
was not known in Newcome? His victim had been a Newcome girl, the man to
whom she was betrothed was in a Newcome fac