“I thought the Lord Mohun had been in Paris!” cried Mr. Esmond, in great alarm and astonishment.
“He is come back at my invitation,” said my lord viscount. “We have accounts to settle together.”
“I pray Heaven they are over, sir,” says Esmond.
“Oh, quite,” replied the other, looking hard at the young man. “He was rather troublesome about that money which I told you I had lost to him at play. And now ’tis paid, and we are quits on that score, and we shall meet good friends again.”
“My lord,” cried out Esmond, “I am sure you are deceiving me, and that there is a quarrel between the Lord Mohun and you.”
“Quarrel—pish! We shall sup together this very night, and drink a bottle. Every man is ill-humoured who loses such a sum as I have lost. But now ’tis paid, and my anger is gone with it.”
“_We!_ Let some gentlemen wait till they are asked,” says my lord viscount, with a laugh. “You go to Duke Street, and see Mr. Betterton. You love the play, I know. Leave me to follow my own devices; and in the morning we’ll breakfast together, with what appetite we may, as the play says.”
“By G——! my lord, I will not leave you this night,” says Harry Esmond. “I think I know the cause of your dispute. I swear to you ’tis nothing. On the very day the accident befell Lord Mohun, I was speaking to him about it. I know that nothing has passed but idle gallantry on his part.”
“You know that nothing has passed but idle gallantry between Lord Mohun and my wife,” says my lord, in a thundering voice—“you knew of this, and did not tell me?”
“I knew more of it than my dear mistress did herself, sir—a thousand times more. How was she, who was as innocent as a child, to know what was the meaning of the covert addresses of a villain?”
“A villain he is, you allow, and would have taken my wife away from me.”
“Sir, she is as pure as an angel,” cried young Esmond.
“Have I said a word against her?” shrieks out my lord. “Did I ever doubt that she was pure? It would have been the last day of her life when I did. Do you fancy I think that _she_ would go astray? No, she hasn’t passion enough for that. She neither sins nor forgives. I know her temper—and now I’ve lost her: by Heaven I love her ten thousand times more than ever I did—yes, when she was young and as beautiful as an angel—when she smiled at me in her old father’s house, and used to lie in wait for me there as I came from hunting—when I used to fling my head down on her little knees and cry like a child on her lap—and swear I would reform and drink no more, and play no more, and follow women no more; when all the men of the Court used to be following her—when she used to look with her child more beautiful, by George, than the Madonna in the Queen’s Chapel. I am not good like her, I know it. Who is—by Heaven, who is? I tired and wearied her, I know that very well. I could not talk to her. You men of wit and books could do that, and I couldn’t—I felt I couldn’t. Why, when you was but a boy of fifteen I could hear you two together talking your poetry and your books till I was in such a rage that I was fit to strangle you. But you were always a good lad, Harry, and I loved you, you know I did. And I felt she didn’t belong to me: and the children don’t. And I besotted myself, and gambled, and drank, and took to all sorts of devilries out of despair and fury. And now comes this Mohun, and she likes him, I know she likes him.”