wise things, the world's opinion, as usual, veered completely round, and
John Todhunter was esteemed a shrewd, sensible man--only not brilliant;
that he was brilliant could not be said of him. In fact, the man could
hardly talk, and it was a fortunate provision that no impromptu
deliveries were required of him in the marriage-service.

Mrs. Doria had her own reasons for being in a hurry. She had discovered
something of the strange impassive nature of her child; not from any
confession of Clare's, but from signs a mother can read when, her eyes
are not resolutely shut. She saw with alarm and anguish that Clare had
fallen into the pit she had been digging for her so laboriously. In vain
she entreated the baronet to break the disgraceful, and, as she said,
illegal alliance his son had contracted. Sir Austin would not even stop
the little pension to poor Berry. "At least you will do that, Austin,"
she begged pathetically. "You will show your sense of that horrid
woman's conduct?" He refused to offer up any victim to console her.
Then Mrs. Doria told him her thoughts,--and when an outraged energetic
lady is finally brought to exhibit these painfully hoarded treasures, she
does not use half words as a medium. His System, and his conduct
generally were denounced to him, without analysis. She let him
understand that the world laughed at him; and he heard this from her at a
time when his mask was still soft and liable to be acted on by his
nerves. "You are weak, Austin! weak, I tell you!" she said, and, like
all angry and self-interested people, prophecy came easy to her. In her
heart she accused him of her own fault, in imputing to him the wreck of
her project. The baronet allowed her to revel in the proclamation of a
dire future, and quietly counselled her to keep apart from him, which his
sister assured him she would do.

But to be passive in calamity is the province of no woman. Mark the race