"Think what you please, Pembroke; I shall not contend with you. Mr. Constantine is of a nature not to be hidden by obscurity; his character will defend itself; and all that I have to add is this, I do not release you from your promise. Could a woman transact the affair with propriety, I would not keep yon to so disagreeable an office; but I have passed my word to myself that I will neither slumber nor sleep till he is out of prison." She put a pocket-book into Pembroke's hand, and added, "Take that, my clear cousin; and without suffering a syllable to transpire by which he may suspect who served him, accomplish what I have desired, acting by the memorandum you will find within." "I will obey you, Mary," returned he; "but I am sorry that such rare enthusiasm was not awakened by a worthier object. When you see me again, I hope I shall be enabled to say that your ill-placed generosity is satisfied." "Fie, nephew, fie!" cried Miss Dorothy; "I could not have supposed you capable of conferring a favor so ungraciously." Pained at what he called the obstinate infatuation of Miss Beaufort, and if possible more chagrined by what he considered the blind and absurd encouragement of his aunt, Mr. Somerset lost the whole of her last reprimand in his hurry to quit the room. Disturbed, displeased, and anxious, he stepped into a hackney-coach; and ordering it to drive to Newgate, called on the way at Lincoln's Inn, to take up a confidential clerk of his father's law-agent there, determining by his assistance to go through the business without exposing himself to any interview with a man whom he believed to be an artful and unprincipled villain. CHAPTER XXXVII. "Calumny is the pastime of little minds, and the venomed shaft of base ones." The first week of the count's confinement was rendered in some degree tolerable by the daily visits of Mrs. Robson, who, having brought his drawing materials, enabled him, through the means of the always punctual printseller, to purchase some civility from the brutal and hardened people who were his keepers. After the good woman had performed her diurnal kindness, Thaddeus did not suffer his eyes to turn one moment on the dismal loneliness of his abject prison, but took up his pencil to accomplish its daily task, and when done, he opened some one of his books, which had also been brought to him, and so sought to beguile his almost hopeless hours,--hopeless with regard to any human hope of ever re-passing those incarcerating walls. For who was there but those who had put him there who could now know even of his existence?