The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 83: what you’re looking at

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

66 THE COURT OF LONDON consented to receive a couple of thousand guineas as an inducement never to molest either the worthy folks in Butcherhall Lane or the newly married couple any more. Such were the romantic and mysterious circumstances attending the alliance of Colonel Malpas and the porkman’s heiress. In the hurry which characterized the proceedings, and in the “ old people’s ” eagerness to save their daughter from the formidable adventurer, Captain Tash, and bestow her upon the aristocratic Malpas, no precaution had been taken to tie up her fortune in any way beneficial to herself. ' Malpas therefore obtained the whole and sole control thereof. But then the young lady’s parents thought that all British officers were men of honour, and that the higher the rank the more superlative the honour; so that those good, easy, and addle-pated City folks had fancied at the time that Colonel Malpas of the Guards must be the very acme of honour itself. The parents and the daughter all learned the contrary to their cost; and when the young lady’s fortune was spent, her husband a prisoner, the splendid mansion in Marlborough Street stripped from attic to kitchen by the unholy hands of sheritts’ officers, and she herself obliged to return home to her parents in Butcherhall Lane, the said parents began to suspect that it would have. been much better if their daughter had espoused Mr. Simon Snuggs, the saddler, than Colonel Malpas ot the Guards. But the young lady did not come to the same wise conclusion from past experience. On the contrary, she regretted the loss of the fine house in which she was her own mistress, and though she hated her husband and would not even open any of the letters he from time to time addressed to her, yet her bitterness toward him resulted rather from rancour at being expelled from her paradise through his extrava- gances than from the fact of his heartless conduct toward her. So that if he had suddenly become possessed of a for- tune and had asked her to return to him, she would gladly have done so; or, on the other hand, if she herself picked up another dowry, she would very likely have sent to intorm the colonel of the fact and invite him to return and enjoy it with her. | Such was Mrs. Malpas, the lady who now called upon Venetia in pursuance of a note forwarded by the latter to Butcherhall Lane in the forenoon. GOMIGDOOKS (E(0) im