"Confound you, Zuly! had'nt he paid three hundwed and eighty for a new cawwiage for you the week before? Hadn't he fitted your dwawing-woom with yellow satin at the beginning of the season? Hadn't he bought you the pair of ponies you wanted, and gone without a hack himself, and he gettin' as fat as a porpoise for want of exercise, the poor old boy? And for that necklace, do you know how it was that you didn't have it, and that you were very nearly having it, you ungwateful little devil you? It was I prevented you! He did win six hundwed at the Derby; and he would have bought your necklace, but he gave me the money. The governor said he never would pay another play-debt again for me; and bet I would, like a confounded, gweat, stooped fool: and it was this old Joe—this dear old twump—who booked up for me, and took me out of the hole, like the best fellow in the whole world, by Jove! And—and I'll never bet again, so help me——! And that's why he couldn't tell—and that's why he wouldn't split on me—and that's why you didn't have your confounded necklace, which old Cwipplegate bought for Mrs. Montmowency, who's going to marry her, like a confounded fool for his pains!"
And here the dragoon being blown, took a large glass of claret; and when Hickson and Dickson came down stairs, they found her ladyship in rather a theatrical attitude, on her knees, embracing her husband's big hand, and calling down blessings upon him, and owning that she was a wretch, a monster, and a fiend.
She was only a jealous, little spoiled fool of a woman; and I am sure those who read her history have never met with her like, or have ever plagued their husbands. Certainly they have not, if they are not married: as, let us hope, they will be.
As for Vincent, he persists in saying that the defence is a fib from beginning to end, and that the Trotters were agreed to deceive Lady Raikes. But who hasn't had his best actions misinterpreted by calumny? And what innocence or good will can disarm jealousy?
Very different from Thackaray is the genial Mrs. S. C. Hall, from whom we have
EDWARD LAYTON'S REWARD.
"I could not have believed it!" exclaimed Mrs. Pierce Bradshaw. "I could not have believed it!" she repeated, over and over again; and she fell into a fit of abstraction.
Her husband, who had been glancing wearily over a magazine, turning leaf after leaf without reading, or perhaps seeing even the heading of a page, at length said, "I could!"
"You have large faith, my dear," observed the lady.