“And now, my dear Apollonia,” said Mr. Putney Giles, when the servants had retired, and he turned his chair and played with a new nut from the Brazils, “about our great friend. Well, I was there at two o’clock, and found him at breakfast. Indeed, he said that, had he not given me an appointment, he thought he should not have risen at all. So delighted he was to find himself again in an English bed. Well, he told me every thing that had happened. I never knew a man so unreserved, and so different from what he was when I first knew him, for he never much cared then to talk about himself. But no egotism, nothing of that sort of thing—all his mistakes, all his blunders, as he called them. He told me every thing, that I might thoroughly understand his position, and that he might judge whether the steps I had taken in reference to it were adequate.” “I suppose about his religion,” said Apollonia. “What is he, after all?” “As sound as you are. But you are right; that was the point on which he was most anxious. He wrote, you know, to me from Malta, when the account of his conversion first appeared, to take all necessary steps to contradict the announcement, and counteract its consequences. He gave me carte blanche, and was anxious to know precisely what I had done. I told him that a mere contradiction, anonymous, or from a third person, however unqualified its language, would have no effect in the face of a detailed narrative, like that in all the papers, of his walking in procession and holding a lighted taper, and all that sort of thing. What I did was this. I commenced building, by his direction, two new churches on his estate, and announced in the local journals, copied in London, that he would be present at the consecration of both. I subscribed, in his name, and largely, to all the diocesan societies, gave a thousand pounds to the Bishop of London’s fund, and accepted for him the office of steward, for this year, for the Sons of the Clergy. Then, when the public feeling was ripe, relieved from all its anxieties, and beginning to get indignant at the calumnies that had been so freely circulated, the time for paragraphs had arrived, and one appeared stating that a discovery had taken place of the means by which an unfounded and preposterous account of the conversion of a distinguished young English nobleman at Rome had been invented and circulated, and would probably furnish the occasion for an action for libel. And now his return and appearance at the Chapel Royal, next Sunday, will clinch the whole business.” “And he was satisfied?” “Most satisfied; a little anxious whether his personal friends, and particularly the Brentham family, were assured of the truth. He travelled home with the duke’s son and Lord St. Aldegonde, but they came from remote parts, and their news from home was not very recent.” “And how does he look?”