Chapter 18

Mother. What I dazzled by a flash from Cupid's mirror,
With which the boy, as mortal urchins wont,
Flings back the sunbeam in the eye of passengers--
Then laughs to see them stumble!

Daughter. Mother! no--
It was a lightning-flash which dazzled me,
And never shall these eyes see true again.
Beef and Pudding.-An Old English Comedy.

It is necessary that we should leave our hero Nigel for a time,
although in a situation neither safe, comfortable, nor creditable, in
order to detail some particulars which have immediate connexion with
his fortunes.

It was but the third day after he had been forced to take refuge in
the house of old Trapbois, the noted usurer of Whitefriars, commonly
called Golden Trapbois, when the pretty daughter of old Ramsay, the
watchmaker, after having piously seen her father finish his breakfast,
(from the fear that he might, in an abstruse fit of thought, swallow
the salt-cellar instead of a crust of the brown loaf,) set forth from
the house as soon as he was again plunged into the depth of
calculation, and, accompanied only by that faithful old drudge, Janet,
the Scots laundress, to whom her whims were laws, made her way to
Lombard Street, and disturbed, at the unusual hour of eight in the
morning, Aunt Judith, the sister of her worthy godfather.

The venerable maiden received her young visitor with no great
complacency; for, naturally enough, she had neither the same
admiration of her very pretty countenance, nor allowance for her
foolish and girlish impatience of temper, which Master George Heriot
entertained. Still Mistress Margaret was a favourite of her brother's,
whose will was to Aunt Judith a supreme law; and she contented herself
with asking her untimely visitor, "what she made so early with her
pale, chitty face, in the streets of London?"

"I would speak with the Lady Hermione," answered the almost breathless
girl, while the blood ran so fast to her face as totally to remove the
objection of paleness which Aunt Judith had made to her complexion.

"With the Lady Hermione?" said Aunt Judith--"with the Lady Hermione?
and at this time in the morning, when she will scarce see any of the
family, even at seasonable hours? You are crazy, you silly wench, or
you abuse the indulgence which my brother and the lady have shown to
you."

"Indeed, indeed I have not," repeated Margaret, struggling to retain
the unbidden tear which seemed ready to burst out on the slightest
occasion. "Do but say to the lady that your brother's god-daughter
desires earnestly to speak to her, and I know she will not refuse to
see me."

Aunt Judith bent an earnest, suspicious, and