afterwards from a tradesman in York who had seen my cousin's jewels--that
those I had trusted to Mr. Clarke's hands were more valuable than I had
imagined them, and therefore it was probably worth his while to make off
with them as quietly as possible. He went on foot, leaving his horse, a
sorry nag, to settle with me and the other claimants.

"I, pedes quo te rapiunt et aurae!"

"Heavens!" thought Walter, sinking back in his chair sickened and
disheartened, "what a parent, if the opinions of all men who knew him be
true, do I thus zealously seek to recover!"

The good-natured Elmore, perceiving the unwelcome and painful impression
his account had produced on his young guest, now exerted himself to
remove, or at least to lessen it; and turning the conversation into a
classical channel, which with him was the Lethe to all cares, he soon
forgot that Clarke had ever existed, in expatiating on the unappreciated
excellences of Propertius, who, to his mind, was the most tender of all
elegiac poets, solely because he was the most learned. Fortunately this
vein of conversation, however tedious to Walter, preserved him from the
necessity of rejoinder, and left him to the quiet enjoyment of his own
gloomy and restless reflections.

At length the time touched upon dinner; Elmore, starting up, adjourned to
the drawing-room, in order to present the handsome stranger to the
placens uxor--the pleasing wife, whom, in passing through the hall, he
eulogized with an amazing felicity of diction.

The object of these praises was a tall, meagre lady, in a yellow dress
carried up to the chin, and who added a slight squint to the charms of