affairs he was uncertain and inconsistent; and of course his whole life, as a magistrate and public man, was a perpetual series of contradictions.  The consequence of all this was, that he possessed but small influence, as arising from his personal character; but not so from his immense property, as well as from the fact that he was father to the wealthiest and most beautiful heiress in the province, or perhaps, so far as beauty was concerned, in the kingdom itself.

At length the day mentioned for the dinner arrived, and, at the appointed hour, so also did the guests.  There were some ladies asked to keep Helen in countenance, but we need scarcely say, that as the list of them was made out by her thoughtless father, he paid, in the selection of some of them, very little attention to her feelings.  There was the sheriff, Mr. Oxley, and his lady—­the latter a compound in whom it was difficult to determine whether pride, vulgarity, or obesity prevailed.  Where the sheriff had made his capture of her was never properly known, as neither of them belonged originally to that neighborhood in which he had, several years ago, purchased large property.  It was said he had got her in London; and nothing was more certain than that she issued forth the English language clothed in an inveterate cockney accent.  She was a high moralist, and a merciless castigator of all females who manifested, or who were supposed to manifest, even a tendency to walk out of the line of her own peculiar theory on female conduct.  Her weight might be about eighteen stone, exclusive of an additional stone of gold chains and bracelets, in which she moved like a walking gibbet, only with the felon in it; and to crown all, she wore on her mountainous bosom a cameo nearly the size of a frying-pan.  Sir Jenkins Joram, who took her down to dinner, declared, on feeling the size of the bracelets which encircled her wrists, that he labored for a short time under the impression that he and she were literally handcuffed together; an impression, he added, from which he was soon relieved by the consoling reflection that it was the sheriff himself whom the clergyman had sentenced to stand in that pleasant predicament.  Of Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Hastings we have only to say that they were modest, sensible, unassuming women, without either parade or pretence, such, in fact, as you will generally meet among our well-bred and educated countrywomen.  Lord Deilmacare was a widower, without family, and not a marrying man.  Indeed, when pressed upon this subject, he was never known to deviate from the one reply.

“Why don’t you marry again, my lord?—­will you ever marry?”