If the reader examines Mrs.Hayes's train of reasoning, he will not, we should think, fail to perceive how ingeniously she managed to fix all the wrong upon her husband, and yet to twist out some consolatory arguments for her own vanity.

This perverse argumentation we have all of us, no doubt, employed in our time.

How often have we,--we poets, politicians, philosophers, family-men,--found charming excuses for our own rascalities in the monstrous wickedness of the world about us; how loudly have we abused the times and our neighbours! All this devil's logic did Mrs.Catherine, lying wakeful in her bed on the night of the Marylebone fete, exert in gloomy triumph.
It must, however, be confessed, that nothing could be more just than Mrs.Hayes's sense of her husband's scoundrelism and meanness; for if we have not proved these in the course of this history, we have proved nothing.

Mrs.Cat had a shrewd observing mind; and if she wanted for proofs against Hayes, she had but to look before and about her to find them.

This amiable pair were lying in a large walnut-bed, with faded silk furniture, which had been taken from under a respectable old invalid widow, who had become security for a prodigal son; the room was hung round with an antique tapestry (representing Rebecca at the Well, Bathsheba Bathing, Judith and Holofernes, and other subjects from Holy Writ), which had been many score times sold for fifty pounds, and bought back by Mr.Hayes for two, in those accommodating bargains which he made with young gentlemen, who received fifty pounds of money and fifty of tapestry in consideration of their hundred-pound bills.