“Am I to have a book? Well; be it so. I I 'll sit and muse over the Attorney-General and his hopes.”
“I have got two very interesting miniatures here. I 'll leave them with you; you might like to look at them.”
“Miniatures! whose portraits are they?” asked the other, hastily, as he almost snatched them from his hand. “What a miserable juggler! what a stale trick this!” said he, as he opened the case which contained the young man's picture. “So, sir, you lend yourself to such attempts as these.”
“I don't understand you,” said Beattie, indignantly.
“Yes, sir, you understand me perfectly. You would do, by a piece of legerdemain, what you have not the courage to attempt openly. These are Tom Lendrick's children.”
“They are.”
“And this simpering young lady is her mother's image; pretty, pretty, no doubt; and a little—a shade, perhaps—of espièglerie above what her mother possessed. She was the silliest woman that ever turned a fool's head. She had the ineffable folly, sir, to believe she could persuade me to forgive my son for having married her; and when I handed her to a seat,—for she was at my knees,—she fainted.”
“Well. It is time to forgive him now. As for her, she is beyond forgiveness, or favor, either,” said Beattie, with more energy than before.
“There is no such trial to a man in a high calling as the temptation it offers him to step beyond it. Take care, sir, that with all your acknowledged ability, this temptation be not too much for you.” The tone and manner in which the old judge delivered these words recalled the justice-seat. “It is an honor to me to have you as my doctor, sir. It would be to disparage my own intelligence to accept you as my confessor.”
“A doctor but discharges half his trust when he fails to warn his patient against the effects of irritability.”