Mr. Smirkie’s general appreciation of the good things provided, did not on this occasion give the owner of them that gratification which a host should feel in the pleasures of his guests.  He ate a very good dinner and took his wine with a full appreciation of its merits.  Such an appetite on the part of his friends was generally much esteemed by the squire of Babington, who was apt to press the bottle upon those who sat with him, in the old-fashioned manner.  At the present moment he eyed his son-in-law’s enjoyments with a feeling akin to disappointment.  There was a habit at Babington with the ladies of sitting with the squire when he was the only man present till he had finished his wine, and, at Mrs. Smirkie’s instance, this custom was continued when she and her husband were at the house.  Fires had been commenced, and when the dinner-things had been taken away they clustered round the hearth.  The squire himself sat silent in his place, out of humour, knowing that the peculiar subject would be introduced, and determined to make himself disagreeable.

‘Papa, won’t you bring your chair round?’ said one of the girls who was next to him.  Whereupon he did move his chair an inch or two.

‘Did you hear anything about John?’ said the other unmarried sister.

’Yes, I heard about him.  You can’t help hearing about him in Cambridge now.  All the world is talking about him.’

‘And what does all the world say?’ asked Julia, flippantly.  To this question her father at first made no answer.  ’Whatever the world may say, I cannot alter my opinion,’ continued Julia.  ’I shall never be able to look upon John Caldigate and Hester Bolton as man and wife in the sight of God.’

’I might just as well take upon myself to say that I didn’t look upon you and Smirkie as man and wife in the sight of God.’

‘Papa!’ screamed the married daughter.

‘Sir!’ ejaculated the married son-in-law.

‘My dear, that is a strange thing to say of your own child,’ whispered the mother.

‘Most strange!’ said Julia, lifting both her hands up in an agony.

‘But it’s true,’ roared the squire.  ’She says that, let the law say what it may, these people are not to be regarded as man and wife.’

‘Not by me,’ said Julia.

’Who are you that you are to set up a tribunal of your own?  And if you judge of another couple in that way, why isn’t some one to judge of you after the same fashion?’

‘There is the verdict,’ said Mr. Smirkie.  ’No verdict has pronounced me a bigamist.’

‘But it might for anything I know,’ said the squire, angrily.  ’Some woman might come up in Plum-cum-Pippins and say you had married her before your first wife.’

‘Papa, you are very disagreeable,’ said Julia.

’Why shouldn’t there be a wicked lie told in one place as well as in another?  There has been a wicked lie told here; and when the lie is proved to have been a lie, as plain as the nose on your face, he is to tell me that he won’t believe the young folk to be man and wife because of an untrue verdict!  I say they are man and wife;—­as good a man and wife as you and he;—­and let me see who’ll refuse to meet them as such in my house?’