Mr Devereux grasped my hand, and looked his grateful acquiescence to my proposal, for it was more than a minute before he could speak it audibly, and I left my valued friends that morning with the comfort of believing that I had been so fortunate as to evince my affection for them in the way most grateful and soothing to their feelings.
As I passed through the Hall in my way out, the door of the eating-room burst open, and out rushed a couple of overdressed hoydens, with flame-coloured faces and arms, followed by a hopeful youth, all shirt-collar and cravat, booted and spurred, and armed with a dog-whip, which he flourished in playful menace after the fair fugitives, eloquently apostrophising them with--"Hoie! hoie! little dogs!--That's it, Loa!--Well run, Phil!--Unkennel the old one!" At sight of me the frolicsome trio slunk back somewhat confused, and a shrill female voice called out from the eating-room, in a half-laughing, half-wrathful tone, "Come back, you combustious creturs! Come back, I tell ye, or I'll tell your Pa when he comes in. Let alone your sisters, do, Watty, dear! or you'll tear their tails again, as you did yesterday, wi' them there nasty spurs!" My inclination to laugh was overpowered by sensations of a very different nature as I hurried past the scene of uproarious vulgarity, and I rode away from the old Hall, with a full heart, well-nigh lamenting that the last lineal descendants of the Devereuxs had lived so long as to witness its desecration.
From that day forward.... But I should tell you that my dear wife gave her ready assent to the engagement I had ventured to make for both of us, though she accompanied me next day to the Hall in painful expectation of witnessing the annoyance and distress of our valued friends. But the perfect good-breeding of Mr Devereux and his sister, especially the dignified self-possession of Mrs Eleanor, prevented all outward manifestation of what must have been the inward feeling. We found them assembled in the drawing-room with their uncongenial guests, and two neighbouring gentlemen, old bachelor friends of Mr Devereux, who had dropt in uninvited to dinner. We were previously acquainted with Mr Heneage, but were, of course, introduced to his lady and her daughters, and Walter Heneage Devereux, jun., who bobbed his chin into the depths of his starched cravat in the most approved style of dandy vulgarity--and Mrs and Misses Heneages! Heavens! that such masses of coarseness, finery, and ignorant assumption, should have borne in common with our venerable friends the honoured name of Devereux! It was my office (Mr Devereux having led out my wife) to conduct Mrs Heneage to the dining-room; and had my feelings been less painfully excited, I should have been amused at her evidently first attempt at the assumption of aristocratical ease and urbanity, as, thrusting her huge thick arm through mine up to the elbow, she leant on me with a weight that would have annihilated the fragile frame of our venerable host, and must have left on my arm the impression of the gilt jack-chain she wore by way of bracelet.