CHAPTER LXXXI.
Pectus praeceptis format amicis.
—Horace.
Est quodam prodire tenus, si non datur ultra.
—Horace.
With all my love of enterprise and adventure, I cannot say that I should have particularly chosen the project before me for my evening's amusement, had I been left solely to my own will; but Glanville's situation forbade me to think of self, and so far from shrinking at the danger to which I was about to be exposed, I looked forward with the utmost impatience to the hour of rejoining Jonson.
There was yet a long time upon my hands before five o'clock; and the thought of Ellen left me in no doubt how it should be passed. I went to Berkeley-square; Lady Glanville rose eagerly when I entered the drawing- room.
"Have you seen Reginald?" said she, "or do you know where he has gone to?"
I answered, carelessly, that he had left town for a few days, and, I believed, merely upon a vague excursion, for the benefit of the country air.
"You reassure us," said Lady Glanville; "we have been quite alarmed by Seymour's manner. He appeared so confused when he told us Reginald left town, that I really thought some accident had happened to him."
I sate myself by Ellen, who appeared wholly occupied in the formation of a purse. While I was whispering into her ear words, which brought a thousand blushes to her cheek, Lady Glanville interrupted me, by an exclamation of "Have you seen the papers to-day, Mr. Pelham?" and on my reply in the negative, she pointed to an article in the Morning Herald, which she said had occupied their conjectures all the morning—it ran thus:—
"The evening before last, a person of rank and celebrity, was privately carried before the Magistrate at—. Since then, he has undergone an examination, the nature of which, as well as the name of the individual, is as yet kept a profound secret."