Mother. What I dazzled by a flash from Cupid's mirror, With which the boy, as mortal urchins wont, Flings back the sunbeam in the eye of passengers—Then laughs to see them stumble!
Daughter. Mother! no—It was a lightning-flash which dazzled me, And never shall these eyes see true again. Beef and Pudding.-An Old English Comedy.
It is necessary that we should leave our hero Nigel for a time, although in a situation neither safe, comfortable, nor creditable, in order to detail some particulars which have immediate connexion with his fortunes.
It was but the third day after he had been forced to take refuge in the house of old Trapbois, the noted usurer of Whitefriars, commonly called Golden Trapbois, when the pretty daughter of old Ramsay, the watchmaker, after having piously seen her father finish his breakfast, (from the fear that he might, in an abstruse fit of thought, swallow the salt-cellar instead of a crust of the brown loaf,) set forth from the house as soon as he was again plunged into the depth of calculation, and, accompanied only by that faithful old drudge, Janet, the Scots laundress, to whom her whims were laws, made her way to Lombard Street, and disturbed, at the unusual hour of eight in the morning, Aunt Judith, the sister of her worthy godfather.
The venerable maiden received her young visitor with no great complacency; for, naturally enough, she had neither the same admiration of her very pretty countenance, nor allowance for her foolish and girlish impatience of temper, which Master George Heriot entertained. Still Mistress Margaret was a favourite of her brother's, whose will was to Aunt Judith a supreme law; and she contented herself with asking her untimely visitor, “what she made so early with her pale, chitty face, in the streets of London?”
“I would speak with the Lady Hermione,” answered the almost breathless girl, while the blood ran so fast to her face as totally to remove the objection of paleness which Aunt Judith had made to her complexion.
“With the Lady Hermione?” said Aunt Judith—“with the Lady Hermione? and at this time in the morning, when she will scarce see any of the family, even at seasonable hours? You are crazy, you silly wench, or you abuse the indulgence which my brother and the lady have shown to you.”
“Indeed, indeed I have not,” repeated Margaret, struggling to retain the unbidden tear which seemed ready to burst out on the slightest occasion. “Do but say to the lady that your brother's god-daughter desires earnestly to speak to her, and I know she will not refuse to see me.”
Aunt Judith bent an earnest, suspicious, and inquisitive glance on her young visitor, “You might make me your secretary, my lassie,” she said, “as well as the Lady Hermione. I am older, and better skilled to advise. I live more in the world than one who shuts herself up within four rooms, and I have the better means to assist you.”
“O! no—no—no,” said Margaret, eagerly, and with more earnest sincerity than complaisance; “there are some things to which you cannot advise me, Aunt Judith. It is a case—pardon me, my dear aunt—a case beyond your counsel.”