canvass of Five Courts Lane, or Stitcher's Row, and at first they thought it magnanimous to stop and shake hands with him. This greeting soon dwindled into a bow and a forced smile, with the remark that after all he had not behaved well to Beaufort; and at last they turned away their heads when they saw the pinks coming, and Lady Sophia asked her mother if she did not rather hate the sight of old Douglas.
The day of election arrived. Lord Beaufort and his cousin rode into the town, accompanied by a long train of Lord Eskdale's tenantry; and shortly after, Lady Eskdale, with the Waldegraves and Amelia, followed in her carriage; while Lady Teviot drove Miss Forrester in her pony phaeton. They were all deposited in the second floor of the house of Mrs. Harris, the milliner, which looked on the hustings. An election was a new sight to them, and they were, in their various ways, worked up to a high pitch of excitement. Mrs. Harris was overflowing with politeness, proud to receive "the Countess," prouder that she should be consulted on the probable results of the election, and proudest that she had made Harris vote against his conscience and inclination for my lord and the colonel.
Mrs. Douglas and her daughters were at the Broughton Arms, at the opposite corner of the market-place, and well was it for Eliza that pink was the badge of her party; it was her only chance of a tinge of colour, for she was as pale as ashes at the shocking contest between her father and her lover, as in her inmost heart she designated Colonel Beaufort. She looked upon her position as one of unprecedented difficulty, only to be paralleled perhaps by that of the daughter of Horatius, who figures in that interesting old romance which we obligingly call the Roman history. She had not seen Colonel Beaufort since his arrival, and now she was to appear to him decked out in this inimical
