Certain little defects in his manners, and some habitual vulgarisms in his conversation, exposed him also to the derision of his well-bred neighbours. Mr. Germaine saw that the gentlemen of the county were leagued against him; but he had neither temper nor knowledge of the world sufficient to wage this unequal war. The meanness with which he alternately attempted to court and to bully his adversaries, shewed them, at once, the full extent of their power and of his weakness. Things were in this position when our hero unluckily affronted Mr. Cole, one of the proudest gentlemen in the county, by mistaking him for a merchant of the same name; and, under this mistake, neglecting to return his visit. A few days afterwards at a public dinner, Mr. Cole and Mr. Germaine had some high words, which were repeated by the persons present in various manners; and this dispute became the subject of conversation in the county, particularly amongst the ladies. Each related, according to her fancy, what her husband had told her; and as these husbands had drunk a good deal, they had not a perfectly clear recollection of what had passed, so that the whole and every part of the conversation was exaggerated. The fair judges, averse as they avowed their feelings were to duelling, were clearly of opinion, among themselves, that a real gentleman would certainly have called Mr. Cole to account for the words he uttered, though none of them could agree what those words were. Mrs. Germaine’s female friends, in their coteries, were the first to deplore, with becoming sensibility, that she should be married to a man who had so little the spirit as well as the manners of a man of birth. Their pity became progressively vehement the more they thought of, or at least the more they talked of, the business; till at last one old lady, the declared and intimate friend of Mrs. Germaine, unintentionally, and in the heat of tattle, made use of one phrase that led to another, and another, till she betrayed, in conversation with that lady, the gossiping scandal of these female circles. Mrs. Germaine, piqued as her pride was, and though she had little affection for her husband, would have shuddered with horror to have imagined him in the act of fighting a duel, and especially at her instigation; yet of this very act she became the cause. In their domestic quarrels, her tongue was ungovernable: and at such moments, the malice of husbands and wives often appears to exceed the hatred of the worst of foes; and, in the ebullition of her vengeance, when his reproaches had stung her beyond the power of her temper to support, unable to stop her tongue, she vehemently told him he was a coward, who durst not so talk to a man! He had proved himself a coward; and was become the by-word and contempt of the whole county! Even women despised his cowardice!