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Updated: June 8, 2025
‘Pray, what is your opinion of woman, Mr. Sparkins?’ inquired Mrs. Malderton. The young ladies simpered.
‘You are very lucky, if you have had an opportunity of obliging that great man,’ observed Flamwell, with an air of profound respect. ‘I don’t know who he is,’ he whispered to Mr. Malderton, confidentially, as they followed Horatio up to the drawing-room. ‘It’s quite clear, however, that he belongs to the law, and that he is somebody of great importance, and very highly connected.’
Jacob Barton, the individual alluded to, was a large grocer; so vulgar, and so lost to all sense of feeling, that he actually never scrupled to avow that he wasn’t above his business: ‘he’d made his money by it, and he didn’t care who know’d it.’ ‘Ah! Flamwell, my dear fellow, how d’ye do?’ said Mr. Malderton, as a little spoffish man, with green spectacles, entered the room. ‘You got my note?’
‘Miss Malderton,’ said Horatio, after the ordinary salutations, and bowing very low, ‘may I be permitted to presume to hope that you will allow me to have the pleasure—’ ‘I don’t think I am engaged,’ said Miss Teresa, with a dreadful affectation of indifference—‘but, really—so many—’ Horatio looked handsomely miserable. ‘I shall be most happy,’ simpered the interesting Teresa, at last.
Miss Teresa, of course, was to be as amiable and interesting as ladies of eight-and-twenty on the look-out for a husband, usually are. Mrs. Malderton would be all smiles and graces. Miss Marianne would request the favour of some verses for her album. Mr. Malderton would patronise the great unknown by asking him to dinner.
The night succeeding the conversation we have just recorded, was ‘assembly night.’ The double-fly was ordered to be at the door of Oak Lodge at nine o’clock precisely. The Miss Maldertons were dressed in sky-blue satin trimmed with artificial flowers; and Mrs. Mr. Frederick Malderton, the eldest son, in full-dress costume, was the very beau idéal of a smart waiter; and Mr.
‘It strikes me, Tom,’ said Miss Teresa, ‘that you have made yourself very ridiculous this evening.’ ‘No doubt of it,’ cried everybody—and the unfortunate Tom reduced himself into the least possible space. That night, Mr. and Mrs. Malderton had a long conversation respecting their daughter’s prospects and future arrangements.
Frederick Malderton himself, the family authority on all points of taste, dress, and fashionable arrangement; who had lodgings of his own in town; who had a free admission to Covent-garden theatre; who always dressed according to the fashions of the months; who went up the water twice a-week in the season; and who actually had an intimate friend who once knew a gentleman who formerly lived in the Albany,—even he had determined that Mr.
Malderton to Flamwell, as he was escorting her to the dining-room. ‘Why, no—at least not exactly,’ returned that great authority—‘not exactly.’ ‘Who is he then?’ ‘Hush!’ said Flamwell, nodding his head with a grave air, importing that he knew very well; but was prevented, by some grave reasons of state, from disclosing the important secret.
‘Upon my word, my dear, it’s a most annoying thing that that vulgar brother of yours should have invited himself to dine here to-day,’ said Mr. Malderton to his wife. ‘On account of Mr. Sparkins’s coming down, I purposely abstained from asking any one but Flamwell. And then to think of your brother—a tradesman—it’s insufferable!
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