However, there was no time to wonder or fancy; they sat down, and P.
engaged in conversation, without much vivacity, but with his usual ease.
The first quarter of an hour passed well enough. But soon it was
observable that Mrs. P. was drinking glass after glass of wine, to an
extent few gentlemen did, even then, and soon that she was actually
excited by it. Before this, her manner had been brusque, if not
contemptuous towards her new acquaintance; now it became, towards my
mother especially, quite rude. Presently she took up some slight remark
made by my mother, which, though it did not naturally mean anything of
the sort, could be twisted into some reflection upon England, and made
it a handle, first of vulgar sarcasm, and then, upon my mother's
defending herself with some surprise and gentle dignity, hurled upon her
a volley of abuse, beyond Billingsgate.

My mother, confounded, feeling scenes and ideas presented to her mind
equally new and painful, sat trembling; she knew not what to do, tears
rushed into her eyes. My father, no less distressed, yet unwilling to
outrage the feelings of his friend by doing or saying what his
indignation prompted, turned an appealing look on P.

Never, as he often said, was the painful expression of that sight
effaced from his mind. It haunted his dreams and disturbed his waking
thoughts. P. sat with his head bent forward, and his eyes cast down,
pale, but calm, with a fixed expression, not merely of patient wo, but
of patient shame, which it would not have been thought possible for
that, noble countenance to wear, "yet," said my father, "it became him.
At other times he was handsome, but then beautiful, though of a beauty
saddened and abashed. For a spiritual light borrowed from the worldly
perfection of his mien that illustration by contrast, which the