Dead silence--solemn stillness--candles with unsnuffed wicks of portentous length. My father and mother were sitting with their backs half turned to each other, my mother leaning her head on her hand, with her elbow on the table, her salts before her. My father sitting in his arm-chair, legs stretched out, feet upon the bars of the grate, back towards us--but that back spoke anger as plainly as a back could speak. Neither figure moved when we entered. I stood appalled; Mowbray went forward, though I caught his arm to pull him back. But he did not understand me, and with ill-timed gaiety and fluency, that I would have given the world to stop, he poured forth to my mother in praise of all we had seen and heard; and then turning to my father, who slowly rose, shading his eyes from the candle, and looking at me under the hand, Lord Mowbray went on with a rapturous eulogium upon Harrington’s Jew and Jewess. “Then it is all true,” said my father. “It is all very well, Harrington--but take notice, and I give you notice in time, in form, before your friend and counsellor, Lord Mowbray, that by Jupiter--by Jupiter Ammon, I will never leave one shilling to my son, if he marry a Jewess! Every inch of my estate shall go from him to his cousin Longshanks in the North, though I hate him like sin. But a Jewess for my daughter-in-law I will never have--by Jupiter Ammon!” So snatching up a bougie, the wick of which scattered fire behind him, he left the room. “Good Heavens! what have I done?” cried Mowbray. “What you can never undo,” said I. My mother spoke not one word, but sat smelling her salts. “Never fear, man,” whispered Mowbray; “he will sleep it off, or by to-morrow we shall find ways and means.” He left me in despair. I heard his carriage roll away--and then there was silence again. I stood waiting for some explanation from my mother--she saw my despair--she dreaded my anger: in broken and scarcely intelligible, contradictory phrases, she declared her innocence of all intention to do me mischief, and acknowledged that all was her doing; but reminded me, that she had prophesied it would come to this--it would end ill--and at last, trembling with impatience as I stood, she told me all that had happened. The fact was, that she had talked to her friend Lady de Brantefield, and some other of her dear friends, of her dread that I should fall in love with Miss Montenero; and the next person said I had fallen in love with her; and under the seal of secresy,--it was told that I had actually proposed for her, but that my father was to know nothing of the matter. This story had been written in some young lady’s letter to her correspondent in the country, and miss in the country had told it to her brother, who had come to town this day, dined in company with my father, got drunk, and had given a bumper toast to “Miss Montenero, the Jewish heiress--_Mrs. Harrington, jun. that is to be!_”