his mother's name; and no doubt the union was not happy, although Newcome
continued piously to acknowledge it, long after death had brought it to a
termination, by constant benefactions and remembrances to the departed
lady's kindred.

Those widows or virgins who endeavoured to fill Emma's place found the
door of Newcombe's heart fast and barred, and assailed it in vain. Miss
Billing sat down before it with her piano, and, as the Colonel was a
practitioner on the flute, hoped to make all life one harmonious duet
with him; but she played her most brilliant sonatas and variations in
vain; and, as everybody knows, subsequently carried her grand piano to
Lieutenant and Adjutant Hodgkin's house, whose name she now bears. The
lovely widow Wilkins, with two darling little children, stopped at
Newcome's hospitable house, on her way to Calcutta; and it was thought
she might never leave it; but her kind host, as was his wont, crammed her
children with presents and good things, consoled and entertained the fair
widow, and one morning, after she had remained three months at the
station, the Colonel's palanquins and bearers made their appearance, and
Elvira Wilkins went away weeping as a widow should. Why did she abuse
Newcome ever after at Calcutta, Bath, Cheltenham, and wherever she went,
calling him selfish, pompous, Quixotic, and a Bahawder? I could mention
half a dozen other names of ladies of most respectable families connected
with Leadenhall Street, who, according to Colonel Newcome's chum--that
wicked Mr. Binnie--had all conspired more or less to give Clive Newcome a
stepmother.

But he had had an unlucky experience in his own case; and thought within
himself, "No, I won't give Clive a stepmother. As Heaven has taken his
own mother from him, why, I must try to be father and mother too to the
lad." He kept the child as long as ever the climate would allow of his