d his
sister-in-law; bent on showing that there was no division between him
and this branch of his family. And you may suppose that the admirable
woman just named had a fine occasion for her virtuous conversational
powers in discoursing upon the painful event which had just happened to
Sir Barnes. When we fail, how our friends cry out for us! Mrs. Hobson's
homilies must have been awful. How that outraged virtue must have
groaned and lamented, gathered its children about its knees, wept over
them and washed them; gone into sackcloth and ashes and tied up the
knocker; confabulated with its spiritual adviser; uttered commonplaces
to its husband; and bored the whole house! The punishment of worldliness
and vanity, the evil of marrying out of one's station, how these points
must have been explained and enlarged on! Surely the Peerage was taken
off the drawing-room table and removed to papa's study, where it could
not open, as it used naturally once, to Highgate, Baron, or Farintosh,
Marquis of, being shut behind wires and closely jammed in on an upper
shelf between Blackstone's Commentaries and the Farmer's Magazine! The
breaking of the engagement with the Marquis of Farintosh was known in
Bryanstone Square; and you may be sure interpreted by Mrs. Hobson in the
light the most disadvantageous to Ethel Newcome. A young nobleman--with
grief and pain Ethel's aunt must own the fact--a young man of
notoriously dissipated habits but of great wealth and rank, had been
pursued by the unhappy Lady Kew--Mrs. Hobson would not say by her niece,
that were too dreadful--had been pursued, and followed, and hunted down
in the most notorious manner, and finally made to propose! Let Ethel's
conduct and punishment be a warning to my dearest girls, and let them
bless Heaven they have parents who are not worldly! After all the
trouble and pains, Mrs. Hobson did not say disgrace, the Marquis
takes the very first pretext to break off the match, and leaves the
unfortunate girl for ever!

And now we have to tell of the hardest blow which fell upon poor Ethel,
and this was that her good uncle Thomas Newcome believed the charges
against her. He was willing enough to listen now to anything which
was said against that branch of the family. With such a traitor,
double-dealer, dastard as Barnes at its head, what could the rest of the
race be? When the Colonel offered to endow Ethel and Clive with
every shilling he had in the world, had not Barnes, the arch