wife and the purity of Nelson's motives, but every sentence indicates
that his instinct led him to believe that another had taken his place.
It may have been that he saw it dimly, and that he shrank from making
any direct accusation, not wishing to break with the man with whom he
had long been on close terms of friendship. It is highly improbable
that either his own or Emma's past histories escaped his memory when
he was penning his grievances. Indeed, there are evidences gleaming
through his memorandum that his reflections were harassed by the
remembrance of his own conduct, which had plunged to epic depths of
wrongdoing in other days. These and other considerations would
doubtless have a restraining effect on the action that might have been
taken under different circumstances. Sir William Hamilton must have
pondered over the parentage of Horatia, who was born on the 29th
January, 1801. Is it possible that he knew that Nelson was her father,
and believed in the purity of his friendship for Emma and himself? I
think everything goes to prove that he knew of his friend's relations
with his wife and condoned it. Nelson, in his clumsy, transparent way,
tried to conceal the origin of the child, so he proceeds to write a
letter to Lady Hamilton, which I shall quote later on. To say that Sir
William Hamilton, a man of the world with vast experience of human
deceptions and intrigues, could have been put off the scent, in view
of all the circumstances, is too great a tax on credulity, but it is
wholly characteristic of Nelson's ideas of mystification. But even if
there were any further proof needed, Lady Hamilton has settled the
matter by preserving the correspondence Nelson urged her to destroy.
This will be referred to later on.

Meanwhile, it is hardly thinkable that Nelson, who had such a high
sense of honour in other affairs of life, and who had accepted the
hospitality and been the honoured guest of Sir William Hamilton at