etite we may, as the play says."

"By G--! my lord, I will not leave you this night," says Harry Esmond.
"I think I know the cause of your dispute. I swear to you 'tis nothing.
On the very day the accident befell Lord Mohun, I was speaking to him
about it. I know that nothing has passed but idle gallantry on his
part."

"You know that nothing has passed but idle gallantry between Lord Mohun
and my wife," says my lord, in a thundering voice--"you knew of this and
did not tell me?"

"I knew more of it than my dear mistress did herself, sir--a thousand
times more. How was she, who was as innocent as a child, to know what
was the meaning of the covert addresses of a villain?"

"A villain he is, you allow, and would have taken my wife away from me."

"Sir, she is as pure as an angel," cried young Esmond.

"Have I said a word against her?" shrieks out my lord. "Did I ever doubt
that she was pure? It would have been the last day of her life when
I did. Do you fancy I think that SHE would go astray? No, she hasn't
passion enough for that. She neither sins nor forgives. I know her
temper--and now I've lost her, by heaven I love her ten thousand times
more than ever I did--yes, when she was as young and as beautiful as an
angel--when she smiled at me in her old father's house, and used to lie
in wait for me there as I came from hunting--when I used to fling my
head down on her little knees and cry like a child on her lap--and swear
I would reform, and drink no more and play no more, and follow women no
more; when all the men of the Court used to be following her--when she
used to look with her child more beautiful, by George, than the Madonna
in the Queen's Chapel. I am not good like her, I know it. Who is--by
heaven, who is? I tired and wearied her, I know that very well. I
could not talk to her. You men of wit and books could do that, and I
couldn't--I felt I couldn't. Why, when you was but a boy of fifteen I
could hear you two together talking your poetry and your books till I
was in such a rage that I was fit to strangle you. But you were always a
good lad, Harry, and I loved you, you know I did. And I felt she didn't
belong to me: and the children don't. And I besotted myself, and gambled
and drank, and took to all sorts of deviltries out of despair and fury.
And now comes this Mohun, and she likes him, I know she likes him."

"Indeed, and on my soul, you are wrong, sir," Esmond cried.

"She takes letters from him,"