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 embarrassing to Sir Everard, who felt it as a reproach to his
indecision. He looked at the attorney with some desire to issue his
fiat, when the sun, emerging from behind a cloud, poured at once its
chequered light through the stained window of the gloomy cabinet in
which they were seated. The Baronet's eye, as he raised it to the
splendour, fell right upon the central scutcheon, impressed with the
same device which his ancestor was said to have borne in the field of
Hastings; three ermines passant, argent, in a field azure, with its
appropriate motto, SANS LACHE. 'May our name rather perish,' exclaimed
Sir Everard, 'than that ancient and loyal symbol should be blended with
the dishonoured insignia of a traitorous Roundhead!'

All this was the effect of the glimpse of a sunbeam, just sufficient to
light Lawyer Clippurse to mend his pen. The pen was mended in vain. The