'It was then I was told the worst tiding that ever I wish to hear! one came, and t'other came, and all had some fuel to make the fire burn fiercer, to give me an item that Lord Granville had over-persuaded my sister to elope with him; and that she died of a broken heart; leaving a child, that my mother, for my sister's reputation's sake, had gone to bring up in foreign parts. My blood boiled so, then, in my veins, that how it ever got cool enough not to burn me to a cinder is a main wonder. But I vowed revenge, and that, I take it, sustained me; revenge being, to my seeming, a noble passion, when it is not to spite those who have done an ill turn to ourselves, but to punish those who have oppressed the helpless. What aggravated me the more, was hearing that he was married; and had two fine children, who were dawdled about every day in his coach; while the child of my poor sister was shut up, immured, no body knew where, in an outlandish country. I called him, therefore, to account, and bid him meet me, at five o'clock in the morning, at a coffee-house. We went into a private room. I used no great matter of ceremony in coming to the point. You have betrayed, I cried, the unprotected! You have seduced the forlorn! You have sold yourself to the devil!—and as you have given him, of your own accord, your soul, I am come to lend a hand to your giving him your body.'—
'Shocking!—Shocking!' interrupted Juliet. 'O my uncle!'—
'Why it was not over mannerly, I own; but I was too much aggrieved to stand upon complimenting. I loved her, said I, with all my heart and soul; but I bore patiently with her death, because I am a Christian; and I know that life and death come from God; but I scorn to bear with her dishonour, for that comes from a man. For the sake of your wife and children, as they are not in fault, I would conceal your unmanly baseness; but for the sake of my much injured sister, who was dearer to me than all your kin and kind, I intend, by the grace, and with the help of the Most High, to take a proper vengeance for her wrongs, by blowing out your brains; unless, by the law of chance, you should blow out mine; which, however, I should hold myself the most pitiful of cowards to expect in so just a cause.
'I then presented him my pistols, and gave him his choice which he would have.'
'Oh my poor father!' cried Juliet. 'Go on, my uncle, go on!'
'He heard me to the finish without a word; and with a countenance so sad, yet so firm, and which had so little the hue of guilt, that I have thought since, many a time and often, that, if choler had not blinded me, I should have stopt half way, and said, This is purely an innocent man!'
'Oh blessed be that word!' cried Juliet, clasping her hands, 'and blessed, blessed be my uncle for so kindly pronouncing it!'
'With what temper he answered me! If I insisted, he said, upon satisfaction, he would not deny it me; "And I ought, indeed," he said, "after an attack so insulting, to demand it for myself. But you are in an errour; and your cause seems so completely the cause of justice and virtue, that I cannot defend, till I have cleared myself. The sister whom you would avenge was the beloved of my soul! Never will you mourn for her as I have mourned! I neither betrayed nor seduced her. The love that I bore her was as untainted as her own honour. The immoveable views of my father to another alliance, kept our connexion secret; but your sister, your unspotted sister, was my wedded wife!"—The joy of my heart, at that moment, my dear girl, made me forget all my mishaps. I jumped,—for I was but a boy, then, to what I am now; and I flung my arms about his neck, and kissed him; which his lordship did not seem to take at all unkindly. Since she is not dishonoured, I cried, I can bear all else like a man. She is gone, indeed, my poor sister!—but 'tis to heaven she is gone! and I can but pray that we may both, in our due time, go there after her!—And upon that,—if I were to tell you the honest truth,—we both fell a blubbering.—But she was no common person, my dear sister!'
Juliet wept with varying emotions.
'His lordship,' the Admiral continued, 'then recorded the whole history of his marriage, the birth of his child, and the loss of his poor wife. That the child, accompanied by her grandmother, who scarcely breathed out of its sight, was gone to be brought up in a convent, under the care of a family of quality, that had a grand castle in its neighbourhood; and under the immediate guidance of a worthy old parson; that, as soon as she was educated, he should go over to fetch her, and write a letter to his father to own his first marriage. But he begged me, for family-reasons, to agree to the concealment, till I returned home for good; and had a house of my own in which I could receive the child, in the case his second lady and his father should behave unhandsomely. I had no great taste for a hiding scheme; but I was so overcome with joy to think my sister had been always a woman of honour, that I was in no cue for squabbling: and, moreover, I gave way with the greater complaisance, from the fear of seeing the child fall into the hands of people who would be ashamed of her, whereby her spirit might be broken; and, moreover, I can't say but I took it kind of his lordship the thought of letting her come to a house of mine; for I had already returned to his majesty's service; which, God willing, the devil himself shall never draw me from again; and I was a post-captain, and in pretty good circumstances. So I thought I had as well not meddle, nor do mischief. And the more, as his lordship was so honourable as to entrust to me a copy of a codicil to his will; written all in his own hand, and duly signed and sealed; wherein he owns his lawful marriage with my poor sister; and leaves her child the same fortune that he leaves to his daughters by his wife of quality.'