to the Roman Catholic pervert's insinuations. There we
punctuate the full stop to our inquiries; we have the secret.

And upon that, suddenly comes a cyclonic gust; and gossip twirls,
whines, and falls to the twanging of an entirely new set of notes,
that furnish a tolerably agreeable tune, on the whole. O hear! The
Marchioness of Arpington proclaims not merely acquaintanceship with Lord
Fleetwood's countess, she professes esteem for the young person. She has
been heard to say, that if the Principality of Wales were not a royal
title, a dignity of the kind would be conferred by the people of those
mountains on the Countess of Fleetwood: such unbounded enthusiasm there
was for her character when she sojourned down there. As it is, they
do speak of her in their Welsh by some title. Their bards are offered
prizes to celebrate her deeds. You remember the regiment of mounted
Welsh gentlemen escorting her to her Kentish seat, with their band
of the three-stringed harps! She is well-born, educated, handsome, a
perfectly honest woman, and a sound Protestant. Quite the reverse of
Lord Fleetwood's seeking to escape her, it is she who flies; she cannot
forgive him his cruelties and infidelities: and that is the reason why
he threatens to commit the act of despair. Only she can save him! She
has flown for refuge to her uncle, Lord Levellier's house at a place
named Croridge--not in the gazetteer--hard of access and a home of
poachers, where shooting goes on hourly; but most picturesque and
romantic, as she herself is! Lady Arpington found her there, nursing
one of the wounded, and her uncle on his death-bed; obdurate all round
against her husband, but pensive when supplicated to consider her
country endangered by Rome. She is a fervent patriot. The tales of her
Whitechapel origin, and heading mobs wielding bludgeons, are absolutely
false, traceable to scandalizing anecdotists like Mr. Rose Mackrell. She
is the beautiful example of an injured wife doing honour to her sex
in the punishment of a faithless husband, yet so little cherishing her
natural right to deal him retribution, that we dare hope she will listen
to her patriotic duty in consenting to the reconcilement, which is
Lord Fleetwood's alternative: his wife or Rome! They say she has an
incommunicable charm, accounting for the price he puts on her now she
holds aloof and he misses it. Let her but rescue him from England's most
vigilant of her deadly enemies, she will be enti