»As for her brother, as for that
scoundrel,« he would say, clenching his fist, »if ever I can punish him I will.
I shouldn't have the soul of a dog, if ever I forgot the wrongs that have been
done me by that vagabond. Forgiveness? Pshaw! Are you dangling to sermons, Pen,
at your wife's leading-strings? Are you preaching that cant? There are some
injuries that no honest man should forgive, and I shall be a rogue on the day I
shake hands with that villain.«
    »Clive has adopted the Iroquois ethics,« says George Warrington, smoking his
pipe sententiously, »rather than those which are at present received among us. I
am not sure that something is not to be said, as against the Eastern, upon the
Western, or Tomahawk, or Ojibbeway side of the question. I should not like,« he
added, »to be in a vendetta or feud, and to have you, Clive, and the old Colonel
engaged against me.«
    »I would rather,« I said, »for my part, have half a dozen such enemies as
Clive and the Colonel than one like Barnes. You never know where or when that
villain may hit you.« And before a very short period was over, Sir Barnes
Newcome, Bart., hit his two hostile kinsmen such a blow as one might expect from
such a quarter.
 

                                 Chapter LXIII

                              Mrs. Clive at Home.

As Clive and his father did not think fit to conceal their opinions regarding
their kinsman Barnes Newcome, and uttered them in many public places when Sir
Barnes's conduct was brought into question, we may be sure that their talk came
to the Baronet's ears, and did not improve his already angry feeling towards
those gentlemen. For a while they had the best of the attack. The Colonel routed
Barnes out of his accustomed club at Bays's, where also the gallant Sir George
Tufto expressed himself pretty openly with respect to the poor Baronet's want of
courage; the Colonel had bullied and browbeaten Barnes in the parlour of his own
bank, and the story was naturally well known in the City, where it certainly was
not pleasant for Sir Barnes, as he walked to 'Change, to meet sometimes the
scowls of the angry man of war, his uncle, striding down to the offices of the
Bundelcund Bank, and armed with that terrible bamboo cane.
    But though his wife had undeniably run away after notorious ill-treatment
from her husband; though he had shown two