Agnes, or, Beauty and Pleasure — page 51: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AGNES; OR, BEAUTY AND PLEASURE. diently passed into that of a wealthy one, It suited either his purpose or his inclination—per- haps both—that his offices should be beneath the eame roof as his own residence; he therefore in due time became the tenant of the entire house in Vincoln’s Inn Fields,—the ground-floor being set apart for business-uses, and all the upper storeys being sumptuously furnished for the private dwell- ing. Then was it that the brass-plate appeared upon the front-door, to announce that the mansion was in the entire occupancy of Mr. Timperley. When we now again introduce Mr. Timperley t» our readers, we find him to be a man about sixty-five years of age —with the same sharp, shrewd, business-like expression of countenance as heretofore — but yet with a certain blandness veiling as it were the sinister portion of that ex- pression. The consciousness of wealth, the satis- faction which he felt at having rebuilt in his old age those fortunes which in his youth he had by improvidence hurled down, the re-enjoyment of all comforts and luxuries, and the experience of that homage which in this country is ever paid to riches, no matter by whom possessed, naturally effected that partial change in Mr, Timperley’s looks; so that anybody who now gazed upon him, would be impressed with the idea that he was a shrewd, keen, and business-like person, not alto- gether deficient in benevolence—straightforward in his dealings, and of strict integrity. Indeed, a very different being was Mr. Timperley with his blue coat and brass buttons, his buff waistcoat, his black kerseymere pantaloons, his well-polished boots, his diamond pin in his shirt-frill, his gold chain and massive seals pendant from his fob,—a very different being did he thus appear from what he was when poorly apparelled, a mean-looking, cringing, bowing clerk in the time of Joshua Waldron. It will be remembered that the deep-laid plot in respect to the Ormsby Peerage had been reli- giously kept a secret by Honoria even on her death-bed; while Mr. Timperley for his own sake had as studiously concealed it. Suspicions there were at the time that something must be wrong in respect to that matter, on account of Morton Evelyn’s sudden and mysterious disappearance, and of Waldron’s suicide—although this latter tragedy might be attributed to the ruin of his pecuniary affairs. But those suspicions had gra- dually died away; and everything which related to Morton Evyelyn’s transient pretensions and as- sumptions, had now beer long forgotten. Mr. and Airs Lister however had not liked Timperley ; and thus they confided not their affairs to his profes- sional keeping. Not that they knew of anything positively wrong against him: but they had shared at the time in the general misgivings respecting the affair of the Ormsby Peerage, and they knew that if Mr. Waldron were himself guilty of any underband work in the business, Timperley as his confidential clerk coula not possibly have been in- pocent. During Mr. Lister’s lifetime, he and Timperley were merely upon speaking terms: but after his death the lawyer contrived to ingratiate himself, by a great show of sympathy and kind- ness, to some ‘little degree into Mrs, Lister’s favour—yet not sufficiently so as to induce her to leave him the guardian of her danghter and niece. fie had however displayed no auimwosity—what- a 43 ever he might have inwardly felt—at a proof of distrust which, as the successor of the deceased Waldron, he might have regarded as an actual insult and flagrant slight: but, on the contrary, he exhibited the most benevolent interest on be- half of the young ladies. He even wished that they should altogether take up their abode be- neath his roof: but this was an arrangement to which Floribel would not for @ moment consent. We should however observe that with respect to the guardianship of the young ladies, no arrange- ment had been made by Mrs. Lister at all: for she herself had perished too suddenly, by means of a crushing malady, to take the requisite step for such a purpose, All that she had done at some previous time was to settle her pecuniary affairs in such a way that through the medium ofa banker her daughter and her niece should become her co-heiresses. Therefore it was merely inthis disposal of those pecuniary interests that Mr. Timperley had any reason to feel slighted or offended, if he thought at all upon the matter. The lawyer’s wife was about ten years younger than himself, and consequently midway between fifty and sixty at the time of which we are now writing. They had been married since their youth- ful period, when he was in the enjoyment of that first phase of prosperity which by his improvidence he had destroyed; and-she had belonged to a very respectable family. The protracted interval of comparative poverty which she had experienced while her husband was for years a mere clerk in Waldron’s employment, had not divested Mrs. Timperley of those ladylike manners, tastes, and habits, in which she had been brought up; and thus, when her husband, again restored to the “Law List,” entered upon his second phase of prosperity, he had a wife who could glide na- turally as it were into these changing circum- stances. When once established at their house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, they gave parties; and Mrs Timperley performed the duties of a hostess with a ladylike courtesy. Floribel disliked them both, from the simple reason that she fancied her mother had mistrusted them: but Agnes, more inclined to judge generously where there was no positive ground for entertaining suspicion, felt grateful for the attentions she and her cousin received from their hands Indeed the two young ladies were always invited to Mrs. Timperley’s evening enter- tainments; and Floribel was too fond of society to remain away from those parties simply on ac- count of her dislike for the persons who gave them, The reader will recollect that Agnes had been to call at the Timperleys while Floribel was seated with her visitors in the arbour on the occasion when the Hon, Mr. Clifford revealed the secret of the duel. Agnes had a special object for paying the visit on this particular day. She had learned that an orphan niece of Mrs. Timperley had come up from the country to reside altogether with her relatives in Lincoln’s Ian Fields; and therefore Miss Evelyn had deemed it only an act of courtesy to call upon that young lady. Floribel, being in one of her indolent moods, had excused herself from accompanying her cousin: but when they were seated together at the dinner-table in the evening, after the interview between Agnes and Charles De Vere, Miss Lister bethought herself of CommclboOolks