"From what I can gather from the man who brought the letter, Sir;" said the old servant who had delivered it, "the Duke of Wharton is at the Castle." At this intimation, an unusual colour spread over the face of Mr. Athelstone. "Peter, that cannot be!--With all Sir Anthony's errors, he will not forfeit the honour of a gentleman!" Peter bowed his grey head, and respectfully answered; "The lad, Sir, who brought that note, told me a fine Duke from foreign parts, with a company of ladies and gentlemen, came yesterday through all the storm to the Castle; and they were so merry and frolicsome, they sat up all night dancing, and singing outlandish songs, which the butler, who understands tongues, told him were arrant Jacobite." Mr. Athelstone rose hastily from his seat.--"Peter, I am afraid you are right."--Peter bowed again, and withdrew.--Mr. Athelstone re-seated himself, and for a moment covered his discomposed features with his hand. "I remember the Duke of Wharton eight years ago in Paris," said the Marquis; "I think it was in the summer of 1716; when he came to pay his homage to the illustrious widow of King James of England.--Wharton was then a very young man, hardly of age; certainly not arrived at the years of discretion; for with a genius that equalled him in some respects to the maturest minds in France, he was perpetually reminding us of his real juvenility, by the boyish extravagance of his passions:--And I have since heard that time has not tamed them." "It seldom does," exclaimed the Pastor, "when the reins have once been given to their impulse.--Oh, my dear Lord, where-ever human passion is, the law of reason and lawless appetite contend there, like Satan and the archangel.--Duke Wharton has yielded the mastery to the ill spirit:--and he is the less pardonable, his intellectual endowments being equal to any resistance. If the man who only _hides his one talent_, meet condemnation; what will be the eternal fate of him, who debases a countless portion, to decorate the loathsomeness of sin?" Mr. Athelstone paused a few moments, and then added:--"I have so great a horror of the contagion of such characters, that I made it a point with Sir Anthony, he would never, willingly, bring his nephew into the company of this dangerous nobleman; and how it has happened now, I cannot guess. Some unexpected circumstance must have brought him to the Castle. For you know, Mrs. Coningsby, your brother has always been scrupulous of a promise." "Hitherto;" replied she "but if we have rightly explained Peter's account, we cannot consider Sir Anthony's present detention of Louis, as any thing less than a breach of promise to you." The Pastor looked more disturbed.--"When the tide serves in the afternoon," cried he, "I will cross to Bamborough myself; and if I find that my confidence has been abused, I shall then know my course."