, agreed in the
precaution of inserting a clause in the settlements (though all the
lawyers declared that it could not be of any legal avail), by which
it was declared, that if, in default of heritable issue by the said
marriage, the Sticktorights' estate devolved on some distant scion of
the Sticktorights family, the right of way from the wood across the
waste land would still remain in the same state of delectable dispute
in which it then stood. There seems, however, little chance of a lawsuit
thus providently bequeathed to the misery of distant generations, since
two sons and two daughters are already playing at hide-and-seek on
the terrace where Jackeymo once watered the orange-trees, and in the
belvidere where Riccabocca had studied his Machiavelli.

Jackeymo, though his master has assessed the long arrears of his wages
at a sum which would enable him to have orange-groves and servants
of his own, still clings to his former duties, and practises his
constitutional parsimony. His only apparent deviation into profusion
consists in the erection of a chapel to his sainted namesake, to whom
he burns many a votive taper,--the tapers are especially tall, and their
sconces are wreathed with garlands, whenever a letter with the foreign
postmark brings good news of the absent Violante and her English lord.

Riccabocca was long before he reconciled himself to the pomp of his
principalities and his title of Duke. Jemima accommodated herself much
more readily to greatness; but she retained all her native Hazeldean
simplicity at heart, and is adored by the villagers around her,
especially by the young of both sexes, whom she is always ready to marry
and to portion,--convinced, long ere this, of the redeemable qualities
of the male sex by her reverence for the duke, who continues to satirize
women and wedlock, and deem himself--thanks to his profound experience
of the one, and his philosophical endurance of the other--the only happy
husband in the world. Longer still was it before the sage, who had been
so wisely anxious to rid himself of the charge of a daughter, could
wean his thoughts from the remembrance of her tender voice and loving
eyes,--not, indeed, till he seriously betook himself to the task of
educating the son with whom, according to his scientific prognostics,
Jemima presented him shortly after his return to his native land.
The sage began betimes with his Italian proverbs, full of hardhearted
worldly wisdom, and t