His Grace — page 92: what you’re looking at

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

86 HIS GRACE. willing to forgive us which belongs to conscious supert- ority. Or, if it was not that, it may have been that he obviously counted upon defeating us at the poll. I am glad to be able to add that not one of us openly lost his or her temper. It was only after he had taken his leave that we exploded; and I must say that never in my life have I heard a man abused with more hearty unanimity. Lady Charles, who, when roused, has a fine flow of language at command, expressed, I believe, the general opinion when she asserted that that nephew of hers was a despicable, sneaking, mali- cious hypocrite. “He ought to have been a woman!” she cried, — nobly surrendering the defence of her sex for the time being. “No maz would stoop to the miserable little devices that he adopts to gratify his feeling of jealousy and revenge.- As if everybody couldn’t see that he came here to-day in the hope of making us put our- selves in the wrong by quarrelling with him !—and as if everybody didn’t know that, if he had been the Duke of Hurstbourne, he would have backed up Mr. Som- ers! He never wz// be the Duke of Hurstbourne, though; I can promise him that much! ” The holder of the title to which Mr. Paul Gascoigne was heir-presumptive laughed a little at this promise, which in truth sounded a somewhat bold one; but he answered: “All right, mother; I’ll take care of my- self, if only for his sake, and if it ever should please Heaven to let me have a chance of fighting him with- out the gloves, I’ll do my best to give him a licking that he won’t forget in a hurry. For the present, I suppose we shall have to content ourselves with lick- ing him out of the field on the polling-day.” Eomichoo “S (E(o) m