tangibility and coloring. Peacock had already found Miss Trevanion's
waiting-woman ripe for any measure that might secure himself as her
husband and a provision for life as a reward. Two or three letters
between them settled the preliminary engagements. A friend of the ex-
comedian's had lately taken an inn on the north road, and might be
relied upon. At that inn it was settled that Vivian should meet Miss
Trevanion, whom Peacock, by the aid of the abigail, engaged to lure
there. The sole difficulty that then remained would, to most men, have
seemed the greatest; namely, the consent of Miss Trevanion to a Scotch
marriage. But Vivian hoped all things from his own eloquence, art, and
passion; and by an inconsistency, however strange, still not unnatural
in the twists of so crooked an intellect, he thought that by insisting
on the intention of her parents to sacrifice her youth to the very man
of whose attractions he was most jealous,--by the picture of disparity
of years, by the caricature of his rival's foibles and frivolities, by
the commonplaces of "beauty bartered for ambition," etc.,--he might
enlist her fears of the alternative on the side of the choice urged upon
her. The plan proceeded, the time came: Peacock pretended the excuse of
a sick relation to leave Trevanion; and Vivian a day before, on pretence
of visiting the picturesque scenes in the neighborhood, obtained leave
of absence. Thus the plot went on to its catastrophe.

"And I need not ask," said I, trying in vain to conceal my indignation,
"how Miss Trevanion received your monstrous proposition!"

Vivian's pale cheek grew paler, but he made no reply.

"And if we had not arrived, what would you have done? Oh, dare you look
into the gulf of infamy you have escaped!"