as amissing, and like to murder man and mother's son?"

"The better I like any living thing," answered Mowbray, "the more reason
I have for wishing it dead and at rest; for neither I, nor any thing
that I love, will ever be happy more."

"You cannot frighten me, John, with these flights," answered Clara,
trembling, although she endeavoured to look unconcerned--"You have used
me to them too often."

"It is well for you then; you will be ruined without the shock of
surprise."

"So much the better--We have been," said Clara,

"'So constantly in poortith's sight,
The thoughts on't gie us little fright.'

So say I with honest Robert Burns."

"D--n Barns and his trash!" said Mowbray, with the impatience of a man
determined to be angry with every thing but himself, who was the real
source of the evil.

"And why damn poor Burns?" said Clara, composedly; "it is not his fault
if you have not risen a winner, for that, I suppose, is the cause of all
this uproar."

"Would it not make any one lose patience," said Mowbray, "to hear her
quoting the rhapsodies of a hobnail'd peasant, when a man is speaking of
the downfall of an ancient house! Your ploughman, I suppose, becoming
one degree poorer than he was born to be, would only go without his
dinner, or without his usual potation of ale. His comrades would cry
'poor fellow!' and let him eat out of their kit, and drink out of their
bicker without scruple, till his own was full again. But the poor
gentleman--the downfallen man of rank--the degraded man of birth--the
disabled and disarmed man of power!--it is he that is to be pitied, who
loses not merely drink and dinner, but honour, situation, credit,
character, and name itself!"

"You are declaiming in this manner in order to terrify me," said Clara:
"but, friend John, I know you and your ways, and I have made up my mind
upon all contingencies that can take place. I will tell you more--I have
stood on this tottering pinnacle of rank and fashion, if our situation
can be termed such, till my head is dizzy with the instability of my
eminence; and I feel that strange desire of tossing myself down, which
the devil is said to put into folk's heads when they stand on the top of
steeples--at least, I had rather the plunge were over."

"Be satisfied, then; if that will satisfy you--the plunge _is_ over, and
we are--what they used to call it in Scotland--gentle beggars--creatures
to whom our second, and third, and fourth, a