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“I should endeavor to overcome your opposition.”

“And I guess you think you’d succeed with your eloquence. You lawyers are cunning dogs,” said the old gentleman, breaking into a laugh, which, rather than otherwise, indicated approval of this feature of the legal character, “yes, cunning dogs. If I give you a chance to argue the case, I’m satisfied I’ll lose; for you’ll convince me that Clara will land in eternal perdition unless she marries you—yes marries you—and nobody else. I don’t want to get into an argument with you lawyers. So if the arrangement suits Clara, I’ll have nothing more to say. It will take a lawyer anyhow to manage the estate to which she will fall heir some of these days. The thing is now getting beyond my comprehension, and I will soon have to get a lawyer to untangle some of my affairs—yes, some of my affairs.”

In this way the old man gave his consent.

Here we must say that the reader would do Ernest the grossest injustice to suppose that the metallic virtue of the young lady was the chief consideration that influenced his affections. Clara appeared lovely in his eyes, and he would have been willing to enter into the matrimonial relation without any prospect of dower. Nearly every one in the community believed that Ernest was governed in this affaire du cœur by mercenary considerations. There is nothing more certain than that an impecunious man who pays his addresses to a wealthy woman, will incur the imputation of improper motives. It is a sad fact, that the world is envious. People, in their secret souls, dislike to see their neighbors lifted by sudden prosperity to an elevation above their own level. Why should not such good fortune have happened to themselves? is the galling, latent thought of their hearts, to which they would be ashamed to give audible expression. The thought lurks in the darkest recesses of the breast like a slimy viper, and well deserves a place in the horrid abode of that fearful envy, so graphically described by Ovid: