never look me in de
face again no more at all.«
    The adept departed with this assurance, in the firm resolution of making
good the latter part of the proposition, and never again appearing before his
injured patron. Sir Arthur remained in a doubtful and anxious state of mind. The
positive assurances of the philosopher, with the hard words Panchresta,
Basilius, and so forth, produced some effect on his mind. But he had been too
often deluded by such jargon, to be absolutely relieved of his doubt, and he
retired for the evening into his library, in the fearful state of one who,
hanging over a precipice, and without the means of retreat, perceives the stone
on which he rests gradually parting from the rest of the crag, and about to give
way with him.
    The visions of hope decayed, and there increased in proportion that feverish
agony of anticipation with which a man, educated in a sense of consequence, and
possessed of opulence, - the supporter of an ancient name, and the father of two
promising children, - foresaw the hour approaching which should deprive him of
all the splendour which time had made familiarly necessary to him, and send him
forth into the world to struggle with poverty with rapacity, and with scorn.
Under these dire forebodings, his temper, exhausted by the sickness of delayed
hope, became peevish and fretful, and his words and actions sometimes expressed
a reckless desperation, which alarmed Miss Wardour extremely. We have seen, on a
former occasion, that Sir Arthur was a man of passions lively and quick, in
proportion to the weakness of his character in other respects; he was unused to
contradiction, and if he had been hitherto, in general, good-humoured and
cheerful, it was probably because the course of his life had afforded no such
frequent provocation as to render his irritability habitual.
    On the third morning after Dousterswivel's departure, the servant, as usual,
laid on the breakfast table the newspaper and letters of the day. Miss Wardour
took up the former to avoid the continued ill-humour of her father, who had
wrought himself into a violent passion, because the toast was over-browned.
    »I perceive how it is,« was his concluding speech on this interesting
subject, - »my servants, who have had their share of my fortune, begin to think
there is little to be made of me in future. But while I am the scoundrels'
master I will be so, and permit no neglect - no, nor endure a hair's-breadth
diminution of the respect I am