her of his people,
containing the most insolent declarations of passion, she vindicated
her innocence by placing it in the hands of the Queen; at the same time
entreating permission that her further services might be dispersed
with. Her Majesty's reply, equally gratifying and affectionate, you have
already seen; and it was in savage and unmanly revenge towards Theresa,
for the frankness and decision of her conduct, that the king had
directed his favorite to enclose me that letter whose sudden perusal
had wrought the destruction of my unhappy wife. You will easily conceive
that the terms of my answer to the Duke of Buckingham were those of
unmeasured indignation--yet he, the parasite, the ready instrument of
royal vice, and the malignant associate of Charles in his last act of
premeditated cruelty, suffered the accusations of the injured husband to
pass unnoticed and unrepelled; and I am persuaded that nothing but the
dread of exposure prevented me from feeling the full abuse of the
power of the crown by the master I had served with so much fidelity
and affection. I have never since that period held direct or indirect
communication with a court where the basest treachery had been my only
reward.

"For many months the paroxysms of Lady Greville's distemper were so
violent as to require the strictest confinement; and the medical man
who attended her assured me that when this state of irritation should
subside, she would either be restored entirely to the full exercise of
her mental faculties, or be plunged into a state of apathy, of tranquil
but confirmed dejection, from which, although it might not affect her
bodily health, she would never recover. How anxiously did I watch for
this crisis of her disorder! and yet at times I scarcely wished her
to awake to a keener sense of her afflictions; for being incapable of
recognising my person in my frequent visits to her chamber, I have
heard her address me in her wanderings for pardon and pity. 'Forgive me,
Greville, forgive me,' she would say. 'Remember how forlorn a wretch I
shall become, when thou too, like the rest, shalt abandon and persecute
me. Am I not thy wedded wife, and as faithful as I am miserable! am I
not the mother of thy child? and yet I know not;--for I seek my poor
infant, and they will not, will not, give it to me--tell me,' she
whispered with a ghastly smile, 'have they buried it in the raging sea
with him whom I must not name?'

"The decisive moment arriv