, he determined to wreak
upon her a signal revenge.
 

                                  Chapter VII

Mr. Tyrrel consulted his old confident respecting the plan he should pursue,
who, sympathising as he did in the brutality and insolence of his friend, had no
idea that an insignificant girl without either wealth or beauty ought to be
allowed for a moment to stand in the way of the gratifications of a man of Mr.
Tyrrel's importance. The first idea of her now unrelenting kinsman was to thrust
her from his doors, and leave her to seek her bread as she could. But he was
conscious that this proceeding would involve him in considerable obloquy; and he
at length fixed upon a scheme which, at the same time that he believed it would
sufficiently shelter his reputation, would much more certainly secure her
mortification and punishment.
    For this purpose he fixed upon a young man of twenty, the son of one Grimes,
who occupied a small farm the property of his confident. This fellow he resolved
to impose as a husband on miss Melvile, who he shrewdly suspected, guided by the
tender sentiments she had unfortunately conceived for Mr. Falkland, would listen
with reluctance to any matrimonial proposal. Grimes he selected as being in all
respects the diametrical reverse of Mr. Falkland. He was not precisely a lad of
vicious propensities, but in an inconceivable degree boorish and uncouth. His
complexion was scarcely human, his features were coarse, and strangely
discordant and disjointed from each other. His lips were thick, and the tone of
his voice broad and unmodulated. His legs were of equal size from one end to the
other, and his feet misshapen and clumsy. He had nothing spiteful or malicious
in his disposition, but he was a total stranger to tenderness; he could not feel
for those refinements in others, of which he had no experience in himself. He
was an expert boxer; his inclination led him to such amusements as were most
boisterous; and he delighted in a sort of manual sarcasm, which he could not
conceive to be very injurious, as it left no traces behind it. His general
manners were noisy and obstreperous; inattentive to others; and obstinate and
unyielding, not from any cruelty and ruggedness of temper, but from an
incapacity to conceive those finer feelings that make so large a part of the
history of persons who are cast in a gentler mould.
    Such was the uncouth and half-civilised animal which the industrious malice
of Mr. Tyrrel fixed upon as most happily adapted to his purpose. Emily had
hitherto been in an unusual degree exempted from the oppression of despotism.
Her happy insignificance had served
