Rosina Bulwer Lytton

“ His reply did not even allude to the subject, but was a rigmarole about the weather; as if he had been writing to an idiot, who did not require a rational answer to any question they had asked. So I again wrote to say--that having been so grossly outraged I was not going to be insulted and fooled by hi, and that if he did not send me a definite and explicit reply to the note I had written at his urgent request before the following Tuesday, or the following Wednesday, I should call at his house, and according to the answer I then received, should know how to act. ”

“ For a moment I was in a perfect fever, for though I hope I shall never become that sponge of all iniquity, a human being without moral courage, I am fearfully afraid physically of a mob. But seeing their cowardly brute of a county member on the hustings before me, with that intensely, vulgar-looking personage, Lord and Lady PALMERSTON'S bastard, the soi-disant1 Mr. ”

“ T_____, that the grose outrage of to-day, so long hatching, shall not be repeated?" "My word of honour as a gentleman (??) Lady L_____," said he, laying his hand upon his left side as he walked into the drawing-room. "Do write the note," whispered Mrs. C_____ hurriedly,--"that man's your friend;--I'll tell you all by-and-by." I shook my head and said, "I don't believe in any man's friendship; more especially in a mad Doctor's, employed by Sir EDWARD," When the note was finished, it was 9 o'clock! I asked him when I should hear from him in reply to that note? ”

“ Mrs. C_____ persuaded me to go to bed for a few hours, I was so ill; the doing so, and my bath, together, brought it to half-past eleven, too late to go to the Mayor to ask for the use of the Corn Exchange or Town Hall, or do anything but order a broughham to drive to the hustings, where the speechifying and public virtue had already begun. And another provoking delay was Mrs. C____ making the discovery that she had blue ribbons in her bonnet, and stopping at a milliner's to change them for white, saying: "Blue is that infamous man's colour, and I won't wear it." ”

“ At this, the reptile rushed, as he had done at the Hertford hustings, but this time not into Mr. AUSTIN'S flower garden, but down Mr. H_____ T_____'s kitchen stairs! and up his area steps! into the open street. I turned to Miss R_____, who had followed me, and said, "See the contemptible wretch has taken to his heels." Whereupon, going into the hall, she pushed the idiotic footman aside and said, "Whatever villainy you are paid to practise towards Lady L_____, you have no right to detain me." T_____ ordered the hall door to be unchained and unlocked, and she rushed out into the street. ”