Reader, when your eye falls upon this page, which lays bare the heart of one whom we would fain depict, not as a mere picturesque brain-creation of impossible virtues and startling faults, but as an erring mortal like ourselves, swayed by the same passions, subject to the same influences for good or for evil--when you perceive how this one wrong feeling, permitted to take root in his mind, grew and flourished, till it so warped his frank, generous nature, that the fiend of sophistry, quoting scripture to his purpose, could blind his sense of right with such shallow reasoning as the foregoing,--resolve, if a single revengeful feeling lurk serpent-like in your bosom, to cast it from you at whatever sacrifice, lest when you pray “Our Father” which is in heaven to “forgive us our trespasses _as_ we forgive them that trespass against us,” you unawares pronounce your own condemnation. CHAPTER XXXIII.--CONTAINS SUNDRY DEFINITIONS OF WOMAN “AS SHE SHOULD BE,” AND DISCLOSES MRS. ARUNDEL’S OPINION OF RICHARD FRERE. Lewis did not obtain any answer to his polite note, as Lord Belle-field received on the following morning letters which he said required his immediate presence in London, and in the hurry of departure he no doubt forgot to refute the charge Lewis had seen fit to bring against him; and as the young tutor preserved a strict silence on the subject, and Sam Jones kept his own counsel with his accustomed closeness, there, for the present, the matter appeared likely to rest. Some little surprise was caused in the village by the sudden disappearance of Jane Hardy, the poacher’s daughter, a girl of about nineteen; but as it was imagined she had gone to take up her quarters in the town of H------, where her father was imprisoned, her absence was soon forgotten. Lewis and Charles Leicester alone, having ascertained her identity with the young person who had assisted in the refreshment-room on the night of the party, connected her flight with Lord Bellefield’s abrupt departure, and although the subject was, for obvious reasons, avoided between them, little doubt remained on their minds as to her probable fate. This occurrence afforded Lewis a clue to Lord Bellefield’s sudden interest in regard to Hardy’s capture: by her father’s imprisonment would be removed the chief impediment to the success of his designs upon the daughter. The event had proved the correctness of his calculation.