Mrs. Clive at Home

Clive and his father did not think fit to conceal¹ their opinions regarding their kinsman², Barnes Newcome, and uttered them in many public places when Sir Barnes’s conduct was brought into question, we may be sure that their talk came to the Baronet’s ears, and did not improve his already angry feeling towards those gentlemen. For a while they had the best of the attack. The Colonel routed Barnes out of his accustomed club at Bays’s; where also the gallant³ Sir George Tufto expressed himself pretty openly with respect to the poor Baronet’s want of courage: the Colonel had bullied⁴ and browbeaten⁵ Barnes in the parlour of his own bank, and the story was naturally well known in the City; where it certainly was not pleasant for Sir Barnes, as he walked to ‘Change, to meet sometimes the scowls⁶ of the angry man of war, his uncle, striding down to the offices of the Bundelcund Bank, and armed with that terrible bamboo cane⁷.

But though his wife had undeniably run away after notorious ill-treatment from her husband; though he had shown two white feathers in those unpleasant little affairs with his uncle and cousin; though Sir Barnes Newcome was certainly neither amiable⁸ nor popular in the City of London, his reputation as a most intelligent man of business still stood; the credit of his house was deservedly high, and people banked with him, and traded with him, in spite of faithless wives and hostile colonels.

When the outbreak between Colonel Newcome and his nephew took place, it may be remembered that Mr. Hobson Newcome, the other partner of the firm of Hobson Brothers, waited upon Colonel Newcome, as one of the principal English directors of the B. B. C., and hoped that although private differences would, of course, oblige Thomas Newcome to cease all personal dealings with the bank of Hobson, the affairs of the Company in which he was interested ought not to suffer on this account; and that the Indian firm should continue

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