Page:Paul Clifford Vol 2.djvu/51

Rh "Ha—true!" said Mauleverer quickly, and as if struck by some sudden thought, "and your charming niece, Brandon, would be worthy of any honour either to her children or herself. You do not know how struck I was with her; there is something so graceful in her simplicity; and in her manner of smoothing down the little rugosities of Warlock House, there was so genuine and so easy a dignity, that I declare I almost thought myself young again and capable of the self-cheat of believing myself in love. But, oh! Brandon, imagine me at your brother's board!—me, for whom ortolans are too substantial, and who feel, when I tread, the slightest inequality in the carpets of Tournay!—imagine me, dear Brandon, in a black-wainscot room, hung round with your ancestors in brown wigs with posies in their button-holes,—an immense fire on one side and a thorough draught on the other,—a huge circle of beef before me, smoking like Vesuvius, and twice as large,—a plateful (the plate was pewter, is there not a metal so called?) of this mingled flame and lava sent under my very nostril, and upon pain of ill-breeding to be dispatched down my proper