Again he started, and was obliged for a moment to pause,--his senses refused their office; but, in another, he rallied; though with that inward tremor which checks the pulse of life, he turned them over, and, seizing the first that presented itself, read it with a perfect knowledge of its contents. The notes and letters were numerous, yet he missed not one; but continued to read them carefully through with breathless eagerness, alive to the apprehension of discovering, at every line of their perusal, something that would inflict a more deadly wound than he had yet received. When he came to the conclusion, he literally gasped for breath. "Thank God," he exclaimed, as he dashed a burning tear from his cheek, "there is nothing positively to criminate the wife of my bosom!" But to so fond, so noble and faithful a heart as Lord Glenmore's, was it not sufficient agony to find, that, while absent from him, her intimacy with another had been of that kind which could permit of such a correspondence?--a correspondence which proved that her intercourse with Mr. Leslie Winyard had been of that nature which sullies the purity of a married woman; and which proved, likewise, that it had been one of daily habitude, and that not only had the hours of the day been passed in his presence, but often, by the dates of the notes, it was evident she must have received them in the morning before she arose, and at night, after she had retired to rest. Was this not sufficient to harrow up his soul? Calling, however, to his aid as much calmness as the circumstances in which he was placed could admit, he reperused the notes, to avoid all chance of a hasty or superficial judgment; and again he had the consolation of feeling certain that they in nowise criminated Lady Glenmore, however much they proved her guilty of an indiscretion of a most perilous kind.
The letters were the artful compositions of a man of intrigue, such as he knew Mr. Leslie Winyard to be; and in the intimacy which they discovered there was a stain on the character of Lady Glenmore, which, though many degrees removed from positive vice, was still a degradation to her and to himself. And is there not a pang of long remorse to follow such a dereliction of duty? And are there not tears of penitence, wrung from the heart's inmost core, to be shed, which, though they through mercy wash out sin, cannot wash out shame? And is there not a something, too, of self-condemnation that pierces the heart of the husband who can, in the veriest shadow of a shade, impute to his own neglect, or carelessness, or over-weening security, his wife's aberrations? Oh! what a world of solemn reflection was now opened up before Lord Glenmore's view! Bitterly did he repent having ever suffered a man of such a character as Mr. Leslie Winyard to be on terms even of acquaintance in his house.