“Madam, you are not now in a condition, I see, to explain yourself
farther--I will relieve you from my presence: my reproaches you will
never hear; but I shall expect from you, before one hour, such an
avowal in writing of this whole transaction, as may, with the written
confession of Lady Trant, afford the proofs which are due to my
sovereign, and to the public, of my integrity.”
Mrs. Falconer bowed her head, covered her face, clasped her hands in
agony: as Lord Oldborough retired, she sprang up, followed to throw
herself at his feet, yet without knowing what she could say.
“The commissioner is innocent!--If you forsake him, he is undone--all,
all of us, utterly ruined! Oh! Georgiana! Georgiana! where are you?
speak for me!”
Georgiana was in an inner apartment, trying on a new robe _à la
Georgienne_.
“Whatever you may wish farther to say to me, madam,” said Lord
Oldborough, disengaging himself from her, and passing decidedly on,
before Georgiana appeared, “you will put in writing, and let me have
within this hour--or never.”
Within that hour, Commissioner Falconer brought, for Lord Oldborough,
the paper his wife had drawn up, but which he was obliged to deliver
to Mr. Temple; for Lord Oldborough had so ordered, and his lordship
persevered in refusing to see him more. Mrs. Falconer’s paper was worded
with all the art and address of which she was mistress, and all the
pathos she could command--Lord Oldborough looked only for facts--these
he marked with his pencil, and observed where they corroborated and
where they differed from Lady Trant’s confession, which Mr. Temple had
been charged to obtain during his lordship’s visit to Mrs. Falconer.
The greater part of the night Lord Oldborough and Mr. Alfred Percy
were employed arranging these documents, so as to put the proofs in the
clearest and shortest form, to be laid before his majesty the succeeding
day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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