There is in the domestic history of human life no cause productive of effects so terrible as the habit of acting according to the impulse, or the convenience, of the moment, without fully considering the effect what we are doing may produce on others. Mrs. Mowbray, in waiting till Charles left the room before she spake to Mr. Corbold of the title-deeds and other papers which she was to put into his hands, was almost wholly actuated by the consciousness that the attorney she was employing (though a serious) was a very vulgar man. She knew that her son was rather fastidious on such points; and she disliked the idea that a man, whose distinguished piety rendered him so peculiarly eligible as a man of business, should, at his first introduction to the confidential situation she intended he should hold, lay himself open to the ridicule of a youth, who, she sighed to think, was as yet quite incapable of appreciating his merit in any way. If any secondary motive mixed with this, it arose from the averseness she felt, of which she was not herself above half conscious, that any one should hear advice given by Mr. Cartwright, who might think themselves at liberty to question it; but, with all this, she never dreamed of the pain she was giving to Charles's heart. She dreamed not that her son,--her only son,--with a heart as warm, as generous, as devoted in its filial love, as ever beat in the breast of a man, felt all his ardent affection for her,--his proud fond wish of being her protector, her aid, her confidential friend--now checked and chilled at once, and for ever! This consequence of her cold, restrained manner in his presence, was so natural,--in fact, so inevitable,--that had she turned her eyes from herself and her own little unimportant feelings, to what might be their effect upon his, it is hardly possible that she could have avoided catching some glimpse of the danger she ran,--and much after misery might have been spared; as it was, she felt a movement of unequivocal satisfaction when he departed; and, having told Fanny to join the other young ladies while she transacted business, she was left alone with the two gentlemen, and, in a few minutes afterwards, the contents of her late husband's strong-box, consisting of parchments, memoranda, and deeds almost innumerable, overspread the large table, as well as every sofa and chair within convenient reach. The two serious gentlemen smiled, but it was inwardly. Their eyes ran over the inscription of every precious packet; and if those of the professional man caught more rapidly at a glance the respective importance of each, the vicar had the advantage of him in that prophetic feeling of their future importance to himself, which rendered the present hour one of the happiest of his life.