“I pledge you my honor, madam, that your wishes shall be complied with to the letter, as far, at least, as any influence of mine can accomplish them.”

“Thank you, sir; I wish you a good-morning.”

“Good-morning, madam; it shall not be my fault if you are harassed upon this most painful subject; and I pledge you my reputation that I never contributed to hang a man in my life with more regret than I experience in this unfortunate case.”

It is quite a common thing to find vanity and stupidity united in the same individual, as they were in Mr. Doldrum.  He was Mr. Folliard’s country attorney, and, in consequence of his strong Protestant politics, was engaged as the law agent of his property; and for the same reason—­that is, because he was a violent, he was considered a very able man.

There is a class of men in the world who, when they once engage in a pursuit or an act of any importance, will persist in working it out, rather than be supposed, by relinquishing it, when they discover themselves wrong, to cast an imputation on their own judgments.  To such a class belonged Mr. Folliard, who never, in point of fact, acted upon any fixed or distinct principle whatsoever; yet if he once took a matter into his head, under the influence of caprice or impulse, no man could evince more obstinacy or perseverance, apart from all its justice or moral associations, so long, at least, as that caprice or impulse lasted.  The reader may have perceived from his dialogue with Helen, on the morning appointed for her marriage with Whitecraft, that the worthy baronet, had he made appearance, stood a strong chance of being sent about his business as rank a bachelor as he had come.  And yet, because he was cunning enough to make the hot-brained and credulous old man believe that Reilly was at the bottom of the plan for his destruction, and Hastings only the passive agent in his hands; we say, because he succeeded in making this impression, which he knew to be deliberately false, upon his plastic nature, he, Folliard, worked himself up into a vindictive bitterness peculiar to little minds, as well as a fixed determination that Reilly should die; not by any means so much because he took away his daughter as that his death might be marked in this conflict of parties as a set-off against that of Whitecraft.

In the meantime he and Helen entertained each a different apprehension; he dreaded that she might exercise her influence over him for the purpose of softening him against Reilly, whom, if he had suffered himself to analyze his own heart, he would have found there in the shape of something very like a favorite.  Helen, on the contrary, knew that she was expected to attend the trial, in order to give evidence against her lover; and she lived for a few days after his committal under the constant dread that her father would persecute her with endless arguments to induce her attendance at the assizes.  Such, besides, was her love of