n oratory, that he could
not repress some threats of vengeance, however vague and impotent, and
finally acquainted his son with his pleasure that he should testify
his sense of the ill-treatment he had sustained, by throwing up his
commission as soon as the letter reached him. This, he said, was also
his uncle's desire, as he would himself intimate in due course.

Accordingly, the next letter which Edward opened was from Sir Everard.
His brother's disgrace seemed to have removed from his well-natured
bosom all recollection of their differences, and, remote as he was from
every means of learning that Richard's disgrace was in reality only the
just, as well as natural consequence, of his own unsuccessful intrigues,
the good but credulous Baronet at once set it down as a new and enormous
instance of the injustice of the existing Government. It was true, he
said, and he must not disguise it even from Edward, that his father
could not have sustained such an insult as was now, for the first time,
offered to one of his house, unless he had subjected himself to it by
accepting of an employment under the present system. Sir Everard had no
doubt that he now both saw and felt the magnitude of this error, and it
should be his (Sir Everard's) business, to take care that the cause of
his regret should not extend itself to pecuniary consequences. It
was enough for a Waverley to have sustained the public disgrace; the
patrimonial injury could easily be obviated by the head of their family.
But it was both the opinion of Mr. Richard Waverley and his own, that
Edward, the representative of the family of Waverley-Honour, should not
remain in a situation which subjected him also to such treatment as
that with which his father had been stigmatized. He requested his nephew
therefore to take the fittest, and, at the same time, the most speedy
opportunity, of transmitting his resignation to the War-Office, and
hinted, moreover, that little ceremony was necessary where so little had
been used to his father. He sent multitudinous greetings to the Baron of
Bradwardine.

A letter from Aunt Rachel spoke out even more plainly. She considered
the disgrace of brother Richard as the just reward of his forfeiting his
allegiance to a lawful, though exiled sovereign, and taking the oaths
to an alien; a concession which her grandfather, Sir Nigel Waverley,
refused to make, either to the Roundhead Parliament or to Cromwell, when
his life and fortune stood