'Make no stranger,' the old Baronet laughingly added, 'of me, I beg! She is my sister-in-law, to be sure; but the law, with all its subtleties, had not yet entailed our affections, with our estates, to our relations; nor articled our tastes, with our jointures, to our dowagers. Use, therefore, no manner of ceremony! How do you bear with her freaks and fancies? or rather,--for that is the essential point, why do you bear with them?' 'Can that,' said Juliet, 'be a question?' 'Not a wise one, I confess!' he returned; 'for what but Necessity could link together two creatures who seem formed to give a view of human nature diametrically opposite the one from the other? These indeed must be imps,--and imps of darkness,--who, busy, busy still--delight To join the gentle to the rude![20] that can have coupled so unharmonizing a pair. Hymen, with all the little active sinister devils in his train, that yoke together, pell mell, for life, hobbling age with bounding youth; choleric violence with trembling timidity; haggard care with thoughtless merriment;--Hymen himself, that marrying little lawyer, who takes upon him to unite what is most discordant, and to tie together all that is most heterogeneous; even he, though provided with what is, so justly, called a licence, for binding together what nature itself seems to sunder; he, even he, I assert, never buckled in the same noose, two beings so completely and equally dissimilar, both without and within. Since such, however, has been the ordinance of these fantastic workers of wonders, will you let me ask, in what capacity it has pleased their impships to conjure you hither?' [Footnote 20: Thomson.] Juliet hesitated, and looked ashamed to answer. 'You are not, I hope,' cried he, fixing upon her his keen eyes, 'one of those ill-starred damsels, whose task, in the words of Madame de Maintenon, is to 'amuse the unamuseable?' You are not, I hope, ...' he stopt, as if seeking a phrase, and then, rather faintly, added, 'her companion?' 'Her humble servant, Sir!' with a forced smile, said Juliet; 'and yet, humbled as I feel myself in that capacity, not humble enough for its calls!' The smiles of the old Baronet vanished in a moment, and an expression of extreme severity took their place. 'She uses you ill, then?' he indignantly cried, and, grasping the knobs of his two crutches, he struck their points against the floor, with a heaviness that made the little building shake, ejaculating, in a hoarse inward voice, 'Curse her!' Juliet stared at him, affrighted by his violence. 'Can it be possible,' he cried, 'that so execrable a fate should be reserved for so exquisite a piece of workmanship? Sweet witch! were I but ten years younger, I would snatch you from her infernal claws!--or rather, could I cut off twenty;--yet even then the disparity would be too great!--thirty years younger,--or perhaps forty,--my hand and fortune should teach that Fury her distance!'