There is a class of men in the world who, when they once engage in a pursuit or an act of any importance, will persist in working it out, rather than be supposed, by relinquishing it, when they discover themselves wrong, to cast an imputation on their own judgments. To such a class belonged Mr. Folliard, who never, in point of fact, acted upon any fixed or distinct principle whatsoever; yet if he once took a matter into his head, under the influence of caprice or impulse, no man could evince more obstinacy or perseverance, apart from all its justice or moral associations, so long, at least, as that caprice or impulse lasted. The reader may have perceived from his dialogue with Helen, on the morning appointed for her marriage with Whitecraft, that the worthy baronet, had he made appearance, stood a strong chance of being sent about his business as rank a bachelor as he had come. And yet, because he was cunning enough to make the hot-brained and credulous old man believe that Reilly was at the bottom of the plan for his destruction, and Hastings only the passive agent in his hands; we say, because he succeeded in making this impression, which he knew to be deliberately false, upon his plastic nature, he, Folliard, worked himself up into a vindictive bitterness peculiar to little minds, as well as a fixed determination that Reilly should die; not by any means so much because he took away his daughter as that his death might be marked in this conflict of parties as a set-off against that of Whitecraft.