yet of my lord's incredible indulgence; for what must he do but
interfere to save his favourite from exposure!

"I think, Henry," says he, with a kind of pitiful eagerness, "I
think we need dispute no more. We are all rejoiced at last to find
your brother safe; we are all at one on that; and, as grateful
subjects, we can do no less than drink to the king's health and
bounty."

Thus was the Master extricated; but at least he had been put to his
defence, he had come lamely out, and the attraction of his personal
danger was now publicly plucked away from him. My lord, in his
heart of hearts, now knew his favourite to be a Government spy; and
Mrs. Henry (however she explained the tale) was notably cold in her
behaviour to the discredited hero of romance. Thus in the best
fabric of duplicity, there is some weak point, if you can strike
it, which will loosen all; and if, by this fortunate stroke, we had
not shaken the idol, who can say how it might have gone with us at
the catastrophe?

And yet at the time we seemed to have accomplished nothing. Before
a day or two he had wiped off the ill-results of his discomfiture,
and, to all appearance, stood as high as ever. As for my Lord
Durrisdeer, he was sunk in parental partiality; it was not so much
love, which should be an active quality, as an apathy and torpor of
his other powers; and forgiveness (so to mis-apply a noble word)
flowed from him in sheer weakness, like the tears of senility.
Mrs. Henry's was a different case; and Heaven alone knows what he
found to say to her, or how he persuaded her from her contempt. It
is one of the worst things of sentiment, that the voice grows to be