“Servants are, at the best, very sorry trustees for anything so valuable; and that which terrified me, and which has ever since lain dreadfully heavy on my thoughts, was the coolness I imagine I observed in yours, when you lay, to my apprehension, in that dangerous condition which it was my unhappiness to see you in. “Think, madam, what will become of those two dear children which you, with all the reasons in the world, love best, should they be (which God in heaven forbid) so unfortunate as to lose you. “I can preach most feelingly on the subject, having been taught, from the ingratitude of the world, the want of true friendship in it; and, from the most unnatural falsehood of nearest relatives, how uneasy it is, upon a bed of sickness, to think of leaving helpless and beloved children to merciless and mercenary (and it is ten million to one but they prove both) trustees and guardians; and had I not trusted in God, in my late dangerous indisposition, that he would not bereave my two dearest innocents of me their affectionate father, such thoughts had killed me. But God has been merciful to me, and so I from my soul pray he may be in preserving you to them. “I could give many more reasons for your grace’s being in this place at this time; but these will prove sufficient to one so discerning,” &c. Lord Coningsby’s children appear, indeed, to have been the objects of his tender solicitude; and it seems to have been his aim to have interested the heart of the Duchess in behalf of these little innocents, as he calls them; to whose newly acquired rank, doubtless, some portion of the courted lady’s wealth would have been an agreeable addition. It must have been, indeed, no easy task to address in terms of passion the Duchess, whose shrewd mind would instantly dispel the colouring which was so coarsely dashed over the real purpose of the valiant lord. The Duchess, be it remembered, was now in her sixty-second year, at which age women may be venerable, but never attractive. It would be well if our sex would learn discrimination, and remember the difference. In November, the Earl gained courage to write a still more explicit letter to his beloved friend; and his letter contains something like an intimation that the subject of a more intimate union than that of friendship had already been broached between himself and the Duchess. The reader may judge for himself, from the following extracts, since it is difficult and dangerous to take the interpretation of love-letters entirely into one’s own hands. The letter is so extremely characteristic and absurd, that since it has never before been published, we are disposed to give it almost ungarbled to the reader. After premising that he found the innocent glee of his children his great and only solace, when returning tired, and more heartless than ever, on account of the dismal state of the country, from the House of Lords, his lordship observes—[307]