Dolly opened his eyes and-blinked. Never in his gaudy days had Jasper
half so openly revealed what, perhaps, had been always a sore in his
pride; and his outburst now may possibly aid the reader to a subtler
comprehension of the arrogance, and levity, and egotism, which
accompanied his insensibility to honour, and had converted his very claim
to the blood of a gentleman into an excuse for a cynic's disdain of the
very virtues for which a gentleman is most desirous of obtaining credit.
But by a very ordinary process in the human mind, as Jasper had fallen
lower and lower into the lees and dregs of fortune, his pride had more
prominently emerged from the group of the other and gaudier vices, by
which, in health and high spirits, it had been pushed aside and outshone.

"Humph!" said Poole, after a pause. "If Darrell was as uncivil to you as
he was to me, I don't wonder that you owe him a grudge. But even if you
do lose temper in seeing him, it might rather do good than not. You can
make yourself cursedly unpleasant if you choose it; and perhaps you will
have a better chance of getting your own terms if they see you can bite
as well as bark! Set at Darrell, and worry him; it is not fair to worry
nobody but me!"

"Dolly, don't bluster! If I could stand at his door, or stop him in the
streets, with the girl in my hand, your advice would be judicious. The
world would not care for a row between a rich man and a penniless son-in-
law. But an interesting young lady, who calls him grandfather, and falls
at his knees,--he could not send her to hard labour; and if he does not
believe in her birth, let the thing but just get into the newspapers, and
there are plenty who will: and I should be in a very different position
for treating. 'Tis just because, if I meet Darrell again, I don't wish
that again it should be all bark and no bite, that I postpone the