Newcome shortly before the
return of the master of the house. The people there were in disturbance.
Lady Anne and Miss Newcome came out with pallid looks to greet him. He
laughed and reassured them about his accident: indeed his hurt had been
trifling; he had been bled by the surgeon, a little jarred by the fall
from his horse; but there was no sort of danger. Still their pale and
doubtful looks continued. What caused them? In the open day, with a
servant attending her Lady Clara Newcome had left her husband's house;
and a letter was forwarded to him that same evening from my Lord
Highgate, informing Sir Barnes Newcome that Lady Clara Pulleyn could
bear his tyranny no longer, and had left his roof; that Lord Highgate
proposed to leave England almost immediately, but would remain long
enough to afford Sir Barnes Newcome the opportunity for an interview,
in case he should be disposed to demand one: and a friend (of Lord
Highgate's late regiment) was named who would receive letters and act in
any way necessary for his lordship.

The debates of the House of Lords must tell what followed afterwards in
the dreary history of Lady Clara Pulleyn. The proceedings in the
Newcome Divorce Bill filled the usual number of columns in the
papers,--especially the Sunday papers. The witnesses were examined by
learned peers whose business--nay, pleasure--it seems to be to enter
into such matters; and, for the ends of justice and morality, doubtless,
the whole story of Barnes Newcome's household was told to the British
public. In the previous trial in the Court of Queen's Bench, how grandly
Serjeant Rowland stood up for the rights of British husbands! with
what pathos he depicted the conjugal paradise, the innocent children
prattling round their happy parents, the serpent, the destroyer,
entering into that Belgravian Eden; the wretched and deserted husband
alone by his desecrated hearth, and calling for redress on his country!
Rowland wept freely during his noble harangue. At not a shilling under
twenty thousand pounds would he estimate the cost of his client's
injuries. The jury was very much affected: the evening papers gave
Rowland's address in extenso, with some pretty sharp raps at the
aristocracy in general. The Day, the principal morning journal of that
period, came out with a leading article the next morning, in which every
party concerned and every institution was knocked about. The disgrace of
the peerage, the ruin of the monarch