“Don’t be afraid, my good friend,” replied Pelham; “I am, you know, not apt to compliment you.—Well, Lady Fitzhenry, to go back to that fatal Saturday night: Fitzhenry had appeared in so strange a mood when we then parted, so agitated, so unlike himself, that I had determined to be in Grosvenor-street early next morning; but the arrival of a courier from the continent with dispatches of importance, obliged me directly to repair to our foreign minister’s: he was, I found, gone to his villa at Putney; thither I followed him, and was there detained so long on business, which could not be deferred, that I did not get back to town till late in the afternoon. I drove straight to Grosvenor-street, and learnt, to my surprise, that both of you had left London—but not together. I feared something disagreeable had passed, and when I reached my own house, I found Fitzhenry’s letter, which confirmed my apprehensions. I declare, that at first I thought he was mad—and could scarcely guess what he meant, what he could allude to. Although obliged in four and twenty hours to leave England, yet I could not go without seeing him, without endeavouring at least to clear up all this sad misunderstanding; and I lost no time in repairing to Arlingford. It is fortunate that I am by nature blest with a very calm temperament, otherwise this meeting might possibly have ended in our running each other through the body. But Fitzhenry and I had been too long real friends for any _unfounded_ misunderstanding long to exist between us. “I at length succeeded in convincing him how perfectly absurd and unjust his suspicions were, as far as I was myself concerned. But there, my powers of persuasion ended: he would listen to nothing I could say about you, Lady Fitzhenry: you hated him, he said; if it was not me whom you preferred, it was some one else. You were quite changed towards him—he could hardly blame you, but things had now gone too far to allow of any hope of reconciliation. You had left his house in anger, just anger—gone to your father’s; had probably told him all, intending no doubt to insist on a formal separation—on a divorce. Perhaps legal proceedings were already commenced against him. And whatever he might suffer, he could, and would, only acquiesce in whatever you chose to dictate.