ou cannot, dearest, blame my folly, or wonder at my extravagance, more than I do myself,” were the concluding words of Clemence, as, with the timidity of a child acknowledging a fault, she laid on the desk before her husband the heavy bill of Madame La Voye. Mr. Effingham opened it in silence. If his young wife had ventured to raise her downcast eyes to his face, she would have viewed there, not anger, not sorrow, but a peculiar and unpleasing expression which flitted across it for a moment, as a bat wheels suddenly between us and the twilight sky, visible for a space so brief that we can hardly say that we have seen it. As it was, Clemence only heard the words of her husband, as he folded the paper, and placed it in his desk, “Fifty pounds more or less—what matters it! you may leave this for me to settle.”
Not one syllable of reproach, not even a hint of displeasure! What intense gratitude glowed in the heart of Clemence, deepening, if possible, the fervour of her love for the most noble, the most generous of men! But when she attempted to express something of what she felt, Mr. Effingham suddenly changed the subject; it appeared to be irksome, almost irritating to him to receive the grateful thanks of his wife.
The evening closed far more joyously to Clemence than the morning had begun. Her husband’s presence, as usual, sufficiently protected her from insolence on the part of his family. A pert reply from Vincent to a question asked by his step-mother, drew upon him such a stern reproof from Mr. Effingham, that the boy was for the time effectually silenced. Captain Thistlewood had walked off all his fierce indignation, and finding that the domestic tempest had subsided into an apparent calm, he made no attempt to stir up the sleeping elements of discord, but, on the contrary, exerted himself to spread around him the atmosphere of good-humour in which he himself habitually lived. His flow of conversation was almost incessant. Having on that day ascended to the ball of St. Paul’s, and explored the depths of the Thames Tunnel, he was equally primed, as he termed it, for the highest or the deepest subjects. He had been wandering over a great part of London, from the stately squares of the West End to the crowded thoroughfares of the East; he had seen skating on the Serpentine, horses sliding and struggling up Holborn Hill, and described all with the same minuteness and zest with which he might have portrayed peculiarities in the manners and customs of some island of our antipodes.
“This merry old sailor must be as deceitful as Mrs. Effingham herself,” thought Vincent. “If I had not heard that he was a bully and a savage, I should have thought him an uncommonly jolly old chap!”
“I took an omnibus back,” said Captain Thistlewood; “for what with the ‘getting up stairs’ at St. Paul’s, and the walking about for hours in the streets, I found myself tolerably well tired. That reminds me,” he turned towards Vincent,—“that reminds me of the riddle, ‘What is always tired, yet always goes on?’ Will you guess it? Bad hand at riddles—eh? It is a wheel, to be sure; so that brings me back to my omnibus.
“We were a pretty full party in it, now one dropping in, then another out,—men of business from the city, clerks from the bank; one I noticed with a broad-brimmed hat, another with a smart new tile, cocked roguishly on the side of the head. They talk” (here he addressed himself to Louisa) “of telling the character of a man by the bumps on his head: I think that one might tell something by the style of his hat; he has a choice in one thing, and not in the other. Well, presently the man who stands on the door-step puts his head into the conveyance. ‘Gentlemen and ladies,’ says he, ‘have a care of your purses; there’s two of the swell-mob in the ’bus.’ So, as you may imagine, we gen’lmen and ladies (the ladies consisting of one good fat old dame opposite me, with a well-stuffed bag on her arm, or rather on her knee) looked awkwardly round on our companions, half smiling, as if to say, ‘Which of us are the thieves?’ I thought that the fat dame opposite kept rather a suspicious eye upon me, and held her hand tight over the opening of her big bag, afraid that some one should feloniously make off with her sandwiches or sausages. Presently the man with the new hat, dashing neck-tie, sparkling pin, and diamond studs to match, puts his hand into his pocket: ‘I’ve a large sum about me,’ he mutters half to himself, half as if apologizing to us for depriving us of the pleasure of his society, and out he pops with all convenient speed. Then he in the broad-brim gives signs of following; he was at the very inner end of the omnibus, and had to push past us all to get out. ‘I’ve a thousand pounds on my person,’ says he, and so gets down, off, and away! I could not help saying to my old lady, ‘There are more purses than two the safer for the discretion of these good gentleman: depend on’t, we’ve now nothing more to fear from the two dangerous members of the swell society!’”
“’............