r
mon beau-fils."

"Monsieur mon beau fiddlestick, papa!" says Miss Lambert, and I have
no doubt complies with the paternal orders. And this was the first time
George Esmond Warrington, Esquire, was ever called a fiddlestick.

Any man, even in our time, who makes an imprudent marriage, knows how he
has to run the gauntlet of the family, and undergo the abuse, the scorn,
the wrath, the pity of his relations. If your respectable family cry out
because you marry the curate's daughter, one in ten, let us say, of his
charming children; or because you engage yourself to the young barrister
whose only present pecuniary resources come from the court which he
reports, and who will have to pay his Oxford bills out of your slender
little fortune;--if your friends cry out for making such engagements as
these, fancy the feelings of Lady Maria Hagan's friends, and even those
of Mr. Hagan's, on the announcement of this marriage.

There is old Mrs. Hagan, in the first instance. Her son has kept her
dutifully and in tolerable comfort, ever since he left Trinity College
at his father's death, and appeared as Romeo at Crow Street Theatre. His
salary has sufficed of late years to keep the brother at school, to help
the sister who has gone out as companion, and to provide fire, clothing,
tea, dinner, and comfort for the old clergyman's widow. And now,
forsooth, a fine lady, with all sorts of extravagant habits, must come
and take possession of the humble home, and share the scanty loaf and
mutton! Were Hagan not a high-spirited fellow, and the old mother very
much afraid of him, I doubt whether my lady's life at the Westminster
lodgings would be very comfortable. It was very selfish perhaps to take
a place at that small table, and in poor Hagan's narrow bed. But Love in
some passionate and romantic dispositions never regards consequences, or
measures accommodation. Who has not experienced that frame of mind; what
thrifty wife has not seen and lamented her husband in that condition;
when, with rather a heightened colour and a deuce-may-care smile on his
face, he comes home and announces that he has asked twenty people to
dinner next Saturday? He doesn't know whom exactly; and he does know
the dining-room will only hold sixteen. Never mind! Two of the prettiest
girls can sit upon young gentlemen's knees: others won't come: there's
sure to be plenty! In the intoxication of love people venture upon this
dangerous sort of housekeeping; they do