From that day forward.... But I should tell you that my dear wife gave her ready assent to the engagement I had ventured to make for both of us, though she accompanied me next day to the Hall in painful expectation of witnessing the annoyance and distress of our valued friends. But the perfect good-breeding of Mr Devereux and his sister, especially the dignified self-possession of Mrs Eleanor, prevented all outward manifestation of what must have been the inward feeling. We found them assembled in the drawing-room with their uncongenial guests, and two neighbouring gentlemen, old bachelor friends of Mr Devereux, who had dropt in uninvited to dinner. We were previously acquainted with Mr Heneage, but were, of course, introduced to his lady and her daughters, and Walter Heneage Devereux, jun., who bobbed his chin into the depths of his starched cravat in the most approved style of dandy vulgarity--and Mrs and Misses Heneages! Heavens! that such masses of coarseness, finery, and ignorant assumption, should have borne in common with our venerable friends the honoured name of Devereux! It was my office (Mr Devereux having led out my wife) to conduct Mrs Heneage to the dining-room; and had my feelings been less painfully excited, I should have been amused at her evidently first attempt at the assumption of aristocratical ease and urbanity, as, thrusting her huge thick arm through mine up to the elbow, she leant on me with a weight that would have annihilated the fragile frame of our venerable host, and must have left on my arm the impression of the gilt jack-chain she wore by way of bracelet.