PORTRAIT-GALLERY OF OLD BACHELORS. 479 



pleasure, and that she should reserve her revenge till afterwards!, 

 In this track, and with such a darne, for like the carpenter's wife in 

 Chaucer, 



'* Wincing she was, as is a joly colt " 



we looked forward to his union. The lady was no ways back- 

 wards, for Charles was rich and young, and by no means deficient 

 in skill; her baits were well laid, and she lured him on till every 

 preparation was made, and marriage was considered certain by both 

 yet with all these conspiring circumstances he again lost his bride. 

 Charles had but little refined sensibility, and the widow was often 

 the subject of his jokes to his friends; while to her he made no 

 scruple at times of comparing her late husband wilh himself. This 

 she bore with admirable good temper, retorted gaily, and though at 

 first surprised and pained at his want of delicacy towards her feelings, 

 she soon got used to it, and ceased to regard it. Her late lord was 

 an old man, whom prudence and the wish of her friends had in- 

 duced her to marry ; and though it was impossible she could love 

 him, his extreme fondness and tenderness had won her esteem and 

 sincere friendship. Charles's coarse jocularity, therefore, occasionally 

 grated harshly with these very proper feelings. One day when 

 walking with her beside the churchyard where his predecessor was 

 now slumbering in the forgetfulness of death, he pushed his jests so 

 far, that the widow, though she restrained her anger, wept plentifully. 

 This for a moment stopped his pleasantry, till, urged on by his head- 

 strong demon, he haunted while he paused and cast a meaning look 

 at his companion, 



" Come, clear the weeds from off his grave, 

 And we will sing a passing stave, 

 In honour of that hero brave." 



Now this was too bad, and the widow was cut to the quick; for in 

 this burial-ground no stones are placed over the dead, a simple 

 upright slab serving as a record : and it must be confessed that the 

 earth covering the old man looked confoundedly fresh, neither weed 

 nor blade of grass having sprung up to hide the naked mould. " You 

 do well, Mr. Placid, though to do it here is unmanly and cruel to 

 remind me of my duty to him whom I have lost:" and yielding to 

 one of those strange impulses to which her sex are prone, she 

 snatched herself from the astonished Charles, and entering the 

 churchyard, knelt over her departed husband in an agony of tears. 



The conclusion of this singular scene had many witnesses; and 

 Charles, thinking he cut but a very poor figure, thus standing on one 

 side the wall, and his betrothed kneeling on the other, in such an out- 

 of-the-way place, gallantly marched home, leaving the widow to 

 recover as she best might. A man of feeling and with any degree of 

 proper regard would have waited till the first burst of her sorrow- 

 had subsided, and then soothed her, and behaved tenderly. But our 

 hero did not possess this sensibility : on the contrary, when he got 

 home, on reviewing the incident he chose to fly into a passion, mag- 

 nanimously swearing that the widow had led him purposely there, to 



