Blareaway,
incumbent of Lower Whitford, at all a sainted young man, but, on the
contrary, a very vulgar, slippery Irishman; and she had, somehow,
tired of her late favourite, Lord Vieuxbois; so she answered tossily
enough,--

'Really, mamma, a week of Lord Vieuxbois will be too much. We shall
be bored to death with the Cambridge Camden Society, and ballads for
the people.'

'I think, my dear,' said Mrs. Lavington (who had, half unconsciously
to herself, more reasons than one for bringing the young lord to
Whitford), 'I think, my dear, that his conversation, with all its
faults, will be a very improving change for your father. I hope
he's asleep.'

The squire's nose answered for itself.

'Really, what between Mr. Smith, and Colonel Bracebridge, and their
very ineligible friend, Mr. Mellot, whom I should never have allowed
to enter my house if I had suspected his religious views, the place
has become a hotbed of false doctrine and heresy. I have been quite
frightened when I have heard their conversation at dinner, lest the
footmen should turn infidels!'

'Perhaps, mamma,' said Honoria, slyly, 'Lord Vieuxbois might convert
them to something quite as bad. How shocking if old Giles, the
butler, should turn Papist!'

'Honoria, you are very silly. Lord Vieuxbois, at least can be
trusted. He has no liking for low companions. HE is above joking
with grooms, and taking country walks with gamekeepers.'

It was lucky that it was dark, for Honoria and Argemone both blushed
crimson.

'Your poor father's mind has been quite unsettled by all their
ribaldry. They have kept him so continually amused, that all my
efforts to bring him to a sense of his awful state have been more
unavailing than ever.'

Poor Mrs. Lavington! She had married, at eighteen, a man far her
inferior in intellect; and had become--as often happens in such
cases--a prude and a devotee. The squire, who really admired and
respected her, confined his disgust to sly curses at the Methodists
(under which name he used to include every species of religious
earnestness, from Quakerism to that of Mr. Newman). Mrs. Lavington
used at first to dignify these disagreeables by the name of
persecution, and now she was trying to convert the old man by
coldness, severity, and long curtain-lectures, utterly
unintelligible to their victim, because couched in the peculiar
conventional phraseology of a certain school. She forgot,