e to Richard
Waverley in the case before us; for, had the sum total of his enormities
reached the ears of Sir Everard at once, there can be no doubt that the
new commissioner would have had little reason to pique himself on the
success of his politics. The Baronet, although the mildest of human
beings, was not without sensitive points in his character; his brother's
conduct had wounded these deeply; the Waverley estate was fettered by
no entail (for it had never entered into the head of any of its former
possessors that one of their progeny could be guilty of the atrocities
laid by DYER'S LETTER to the door of Richard), and if it had, the
marriage of the proprietor might have been fatal to a collateral heir.
These various ideas floated through the brain of Sir Everard, without,
however, producing any determined conclusion.

He examined the tree of his genealogy, which, emblazoned with many
an emblematic mark of honour and heroic achievement, hung upon the
well-varnished wainscot of his hall. The nearest descendants of Sir
Hildebrand Waverley, failing those of his eldest son Wilfred, of whom
Sir Everard and his brother were the only representatives, were, as this
honoured register informed him (and, indeed, as he himself well knew),
the Waverleys of Highley Park, com. Hants; with whom the main branch, or
rather stock, of the house had renounced all connexion, since the great
lawsuit in 1670.

This degenerate scion had committed a further offence against the
head and source of their gentility, by the intermarriage of their
representative with Judith, heiress of Oliver Bradshawe, of Highley
Park, whose arms, the same with those of Bradshawe the regicide,
they had quartered with the ancient coat of Waverley. These offences,
however, had vanished from Sir Everard's recollection in the heat of his
resentment; and had Lawyer Clippurse, for whom his groom was dispatched
express, arrived but an hour earlier, he might have had the benefit of
drawing a new settlement of the lordship and manor of Waverley-Honour,
with all its dependencies. But an hour of cool reflection is a great
matter, when employed in weighing the comparative evil of two measures,
to neither of which we are internally partial. Lawyer Clippurse found
his patron involved in a deep study, which he was too respectful to
disturb, otherwise than by producing his paper and leathern ink-case, as
prepared to minute his honour's commands. Even this slight manoeuvre
was