venture the unreserved avowal of their sentiments, muttered curses,
deep, not loud; while the rest joined in an universal cry of abhorrence and
execration. He stood astonished at the novelty of his situation. Accustomed as
he had been to the obedience and trembling homage of mankind, he had imagined
they would be perpetual, and that no excess on his part would ever be potent
enough to break the enchantment. Now he looked round and saw sullen detestation
in every face, which with difficulty restrained itself, and upon the slightest
provocation broke forth with an impetuous tide, and swept away all the mounds of
subordination and fear. His large estate could not now purchase civility from
the gentry, the peasantry, scarcely from his own servants. In the indignation of
all around him he found a ghost that haunted him with every change of place, and
a remorse that stung his conscience and exterminated his peace. The
neighbourhood appeared more and more every day to be growing too hot for him to
endure, and it became evident that he would ultimately be obliged to quit the
county. Urged by the flagitiousness of this last example, people learned to
recollect every other instance of his excesses, and it was no doubt a fearful
catalogue that rose up in judgment against him. It seemed as if the sense of
public resentment had long been gathering strength unperceived, and now burst
forth into insuppressible violence.
    There was scarcely a human being upon whom this sort of retribution could
have sat more painfully than upon Mr. Tyrrel. Though he had not a consciousness
of innocence prompting him continually to recoil from the detestation of mankind
as a thing totally unallied to his character, yet the imperiousness of his
temper and the constant experience he had had of the pliability of other men,
prepared him to feel the general and undisguised condemnation into which he was
sunk with uncommon emotions of anger and impatience. That he, at the beam of
whose eye every countenance fell, and to whom in the fierceness of his wrath no
one was daring enough to reply, should now be regarded with avowed dislike and
treated with unceremonious censure, was a thing he could not endure to recollect
or believe. Symptoms of the universal disgust smote him at every instant, and at
every blow he writhed with intolerable anguish. His rage was unbounded and
raving. He repelled every attack with the fiercest indignation; while the more
he struggled, the more desperate his situation appeared to become. At length he
determined to collect his strength for a decisive effort, and to meet the whole
tide of public opinion in a single scene.
    In pursuance of these thoughts he resolved to repair