ided upon. This he showed at once to St.
Vincent, who acquiesced of course in the disappointment, but expressed
a hope that after a brief absence he would rejoin him.

By the first of February the "San Josef" had gone round to Torbay, the
rendezvous of the Channel fleet under St. Vincent's command, and there
it was that Nelson received the news of the birth, on the 29th or 30th
of January, of the child Horatia, whose parentage for a long time gave
rise to much discussion, and is even yet considered by some a matter
of doubt. Fortunately, that question requires no investigation here;
as regards the Life of Nelson, and his character as involved in this
matter, the fact is beyond dispute that he believed himself the
father, and Lady Hamilton the mother, of the girl, whose origin he
sought to conceal by an elaborate though clumsy system of
mystification. This might possibly have left the subject covered with
clouds, though not greatly in doubt, had not Lady Hamilton, after
wildly unnecessary lying on her own part, recklessly preserved her
holdings of a correspondence which Nelson scrupulously destroyed, and
enjoined her to destroy.

The sedulous care on his side to conceal the nature of their
relations, and the reckless disregard of his wishes shown by her, is
singularly illustrated by the method he took to bring the child into
her charge, from that of the nurse to whom it had been intrusted. When
it was somewhat over three years old, on the 13th of August, 1804, he
wrote Lady Hamilton a letter, evidently to be used, where necessary,
to account for its presence under his roof. "I am now going to state a
thing to you and to request your kind assistance, which, from my dear
Emma's goodness of heart, I am sure of her acquiescence in. Before we
left Italy I told you of the extraordinary circumstance of a child
being left to my care and protection. On your first coming to England
I presented you the child, dear Horatia. You became, to my comfort,
attached to it, so did Sir William, thinking her the finest child he
had ever seen. She is become of that age when it is necessary to
remove her from a mere nurse and to think of educating her.... I shall
tell you, my dear Emma, more of this matter when I come to England,
but I am now anxious for the child's being placed under your
protecting wing." With this letter (or, possibly, with another written
the same day) was found an enclosure, undated and unsigned, but in
Nelson's handwrit