I trust that it will now be felt I am prepared to do Sir William Gascoigne the amplest justice; and will lose no more time in enumerating the moral enormities whereof I am so anxious to prove he could not possibly have been guilty. The decision I have already been reluctantly brought to--explained in the last chapter--that his Lordship’s character was not free from a strong taint of envy, which only induces me to be the more careful. Let us shun prejudice above all things. Envy, as we all know, if not kept in check by the worthier attributes of our nature, will lead to the commission of every earthly crime, especially of offences such as those which I think--yes, I think--I am about to show you Sir William Gascoigne was incapable of meditating, or, at any rate, of putting into execution. And now I have worked myself up into a perfectly sanguine condition. I am sure I shall be able to clear the Justice’s reputation from the last lingering blemish of suspicion. If I do not succeed I shall be very much disappointed. In the first place it is improbable that any close degree of intimacy should have existed between a man of Sir William’s exalted position and an obscure person like Mistress Helen Quickly, widow and licensed victualler, proprietress of the Old Boar’s Head Tavern, Eastcheap. It is true that the great legal functionaries of that period--as of many much later--were usually men of obscure birth, raised, in most cases (unquestionably in that of Gascoigne), to power and distinction by the exercise of their own talents and virtues; allowing for this, it is not unlikely that Sir William, in early life, may have been acquainted with, and even befriended by, Mrs. Quickly. There is even reason to believe that they were blood relations. A statement from Sir John Falstaff that the lady was in the habit of going about London asserting--with pardonable arrogance--that her eldest son bore a striking physical resemblance to the Chief Justice would lend some probability to this theory. A suspicion on Sir John’s part that this boast might have originated in mental hallucination may, or may not, be considered to weaken the evidence. We will pass this over, and confine ourselves to the supposition that Sir William Gascoigne, when a struggling law-student, was possibly greatly indebted to the maternal or sisterly hospitality of Mrs. Quickly. There would be no harm in his accepting gratuitous board--nay, even in his borrowing money--at her hands. Well! as a just man and a grateful, he would, of course, not forget his old benefactress in the days of his prosperity. Duty to his high position would not enable him to avow the acquaintance publicly (more especially if the by no means disproved relationship really existed). Still, it is not unreasonable to suppose that Sir William may have occasionally looked in at the Boar’s Head, for a quiet flagon and a confidential chat with his friend the hostess, to whom as a lone woman and a confiding