So, here was the end--the mocking means adopted to the rejection of his suit. It was a vile, cruel jest, he thought; a characteristic indulgence of selfishness inhuman, for which presently he would take fierce delight in calling a certain statesman to account. A statesman! his stricken vanity yelled to itself: a diplomatic buffoon who would sacrifice principle to a pun. So he classified Mr Sheridan, to whom he would attribute this ruin of his hopes. But deeper emotions prevailed. Had the duke been, or was he at this last, despite his protestations, a party to the fraud? It mattered nothing at all. There was a more intimate question to put to his heart--the sadder and more sombre inquiry, Was the girl herself a confederate? And here he fell all amazed and overwhelmed; plunged in a slough of the most sorrowful speculation; struggling for foothold--for some memory at which he might clutch for the righting of his moral balance. There should have been many memories--of kind looks and words and touches, all instinct with the tender humour of truth. God in heaven! It was conceivable that the elder woman, the old practised strategist, had played a consummate _rôle_. It was never inconsistent with the principles of such pantological professors to indulge the hypocritical as part of their universal equipment. But Pamela, with not that of roguishness in her sweet eyes to justify a belief in anything but an innately honest soul behind them! Pamela, in the sincerity of her heart, in the womanliness of her nature, in the cleanness of her lips, craftily intriguing to indict Love’s passion of trust! He could not believe it. He could not but believe that some words, some acts of hers--most haunting in the retrospect--had been designed to express her sympathy with that in him which she could only as yet recognise in herself for a mood. And it had been, then, Madame de Genlis’ private policy to dismiss him before this mood--this bud--could timely open out into a flower. Well, she had succeeded--thanks to one self-interested, with whom the reckoning was to come--she had succeeded, and aptly, no doubt, to the sequel. For it was not to be supposed that madame’s artifice would permit her to wean its subject from a fancy and fail to find the subject other food for a stimulated appetite. My lord the viscount had possibly, indeed, but (in the vernacular) kept the place warm for another. The sun of his passion may have only a little ripened the fruit for the delectation of lips more blest than his. By this time, it was probable, the dream that had been his was a transferred rapture.