“Is the writer of the letter to be come at?”
“Nothing easier. I'll take you over to breakfast with her to-morrow morning; you shall catechise her yourself.”
“Oh! she is then—”
“She is the Princess Sabloukoff, my dear George, and a very charming person, as you will be the first to acknowledge. But as to this interview at Brighton, I fancy—even from the disjointed narrative of Glencore—one can make a guess of what it portended. The King saw that my Lady Glencore—for so we must call her—knew some very important facts about the Queen, and wished to obtain them; and saw, too, that certain scandals, as the phrase goes, which attached to her ladyship, lay at another door. He fancied, not unreasonably, perhaps, that Glencore would be glad to hear this exculpation of his wife; and he calculated that by the boon of this intelligence he could gain over Glencore to assist him in his project for a divorce. Don't you perceive, Harcourt, of what an inestimable value it would prove, to possess one single gentleman, one man or one woman of station, amid all this rabble that they are summoning throughout the world to bring shame upon England?”
“Then you incline to believe Lady Glencore blameless?” asked Harcourt, anxiously.
“I think well of every one, my charming Colonel. It is the only true philosophy in life. Be as severe as you please on all who injure yourself, but always be lenient to the faults that only damage your friends. You have no idea how much practical wisdom the maxim contains, nor what a fund of charity it provides.”
“I 'm ashamed to be so stupid, but I must come back to my old question. Is all this story against Glencore's wife only a calumny?”
“And I must fall back upon my old remark, that all the rogues in the world are in jail; the people you see walking about and at large are unexceptionably honest,—every man of them. Ah, my dear deputy-assistant, adjutant, or commissary, or whatever it be, can you not perceive the more than folly of these perquisitions into character? You don't require that the ice should be strong enough to sustain a twenty-four pounder before you venture to put foot on it,—enough that it is quite equal to your own weight; and so of the world at large,—everybody, or nearly everybody, has virtue enough for all we want with him. This English habit—for it is essentially English—of eternally investigating everything, is like the policy of a man who would fire a round-shot every morning at his house, to see if it were well and securely built.”
“I don't, I can't agree with you,” cried Harcourt.
“Be it so, my dear fellow; only don't give me your reasons, and at least I shall respect your motives.”