“She was in a deep decline, and had been at Lisbon for some time, but she was now sent home by the physicians, as they send people from one country to another to die. The captain of the ship in which she was mistook the lights upon the coast, and ran the ship ashore near to our house. “Of course we did for her all we could, but she was dying: she knew nothing of my history, and I trust I soothed her last moments--she died in my arms. “She had one child, a son, then at Eton: we sent for him; he arrived too late; the feeling he showed interested us deeply; we kept him with us some time; he was grateful; and afterwards as he grew up he often wrote to me. His letters you have read.” “Mr. Beauclerc!” said Helen. “Mr. Beauclerc.--I had not seen him for some time, when General Clarendon presented him to me as his ward at Florence, where I had opportunities of essentially serving him. You may now understand, my dear, why I had expected that Mr. Granville Beauclerc might have preferred coming to Clarendon Park this last month of my stay in England to the pleasures of London. I was angry, I own, but after five minutes’ grace I cooled, saw that I must be mistaken, and came to the just conclusion of the old poet, that no one sinks at once to the depth of ill, and ingratitude I consider as the depth of ill. I opine, therefore, that some stronger feeling than friendship now operates to detain Granville Beauclerc. In that case I forgive him, but, for his own sake, and with such a young man I should say for the sake of society--of the public good--for he will end in public life, I hope the present object is worthy of him, whoever she may be. “Have I anything more to tell you? Yes, I should say that, when by changes in the political world Lord Davenant was again in power, I had learned, if not to be less ambitious, at least to show it less. D----, who knew always how to put sense into my mind, so that I found it there, and thought it completely my own, had once said that ‘every public man who has a cultivated and high-minded wife, has in fact two selves, each holding watch and ward for the other.’ The notion pleased me--pleased both my fancy and my reason; I acted on it, and Lord Davenant assures me that I have been this second self to him, and I am willing to believe it, first because he is a man of strict truth, and secondly, because every woman is willing to believe what she wishes.”