So saying, he drew pen and ink towards him and hastily wrote as follows:—
“Mr. Arundel presents his compliments to Lord Bellefield, and begs to return the pistol with which he did him the honour to attempt his life in the wood last night. Mr. Arundel reserves the pleasure of returning the shot till some future opportunity.”
He then rolled up the note, and inserting it in the barrel of the pistol, formed the whole into a small parcel, which he carefully sealed, and ringing for Lord Bellefield’s valet, desired him to lay it on his master’s dressing-table before he prepared for dinner.
Reader, when your eye falls upon this page, which lays bare the heart of one whom we would fain depict, not as a mere picturesque brain-creation of impossible virtues and startling faults, but as an erring mortal like ourselves, swayed by the same passions, subject to the same influences for good or for evil—when you perceive how this one wrong feeling, permitted to take root in his mind, grew and flourished, till it so warped his frank, generous nature, that the fiend of sophistry, quoting scripture to his purpose, could blind his sense of right with such shallow reasoning as the foregoing,—resolve, if a single revengeful feeling lurk serpent-like in your bosom, to cast it from you at whatever sacrifice, lest when you pray “Our Father” which is in heaven to “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us,” you unawares pronounce your own condemnation.
CHAPTER XXXIII.—CONTAINS SUNDRY DEFINITIONS OF WOMAN “AS SHE SHOULD BE,” AND DISCLOSES MRS. ARUNDEL’S OPINION OF RICHARD FRERE.
Lewis did not obtain any answer to his polite note, as Lord Belle-field received on the following morning letters which he said required his immediate presence in London, and in the hurry of departure he no doubt forgot to refute the charge Lewis had seen fit to bring against him; and as the young tutor preserved a strict silence on the subject, and Sam Jones kept his own counsel with his accustomed closeness, there, for the present, the matter appeared likely to rest. Some little surprise was caused in the village by the sudden disappearance of Jane Hardy, the poacher’s daughter, a girl of about nineteen; but as it was imagined she had gone to take up her quarters in the town of H———, where her father was imprisoned, her absence was soon forgotten. Lewis and Charles Leicester alone, having ascertained her identity with the young person who had assisted in the refreshment-room on the night of the party, connected her flight with Lord Bellefield’s abrupt departure, and although the subject was, for obvious reasons, avoided between them, little doubt remained on their minds as to her probable fate. This occurrence afforded Lewis a clue to Lord Bellefield’s sudden interest in regard to Hardy’s capture: by her father’s imprisonment would be removed the chief impediment to the success of his designs upon the daughter. The event had proved the correctness of his calculation.
Weeks passed on; the wound in Lewis’s shoulder healed, despite the aggravating attendance of Doctors Scalpel and Bistoury, and with youth and health on his side he speedily regained his accustomed vigour. General Grant’s recovery was a matter of greater difficulty. The fracture had been by no means easily reduced, and the process by which the bones re-united was a long and tedious one. His accident (as is usually the case with such events) had occurred at a most inconvenient moment. While he was yet confined to his room the election for the county came on, and his opponent, taking advantage of his absence to undermine his influence with the voters, was returned by a large majority. The bribery by which he had obtained his seat was, however, a matter of such notoriety, that, by De Grandeville’s advice, the General was induced to petition Parliament to annul the election. The petition failed, and the expenses, which, from the prolonged proceedings, were unusually heavy, all fell upon the unsuccessful candidate. During the progress of the affair, Lewis, by the General’s wish, acted as his amanuensis and private secretary, a confidential servant being engaged to wait on Walter and attend him during his rides, thus relieving his tutor of much that was irksome in his situation. The London season was at its height before General Grant had recovered sufficiently to leave Broadhurst, but a fortnight before the day on which Charles Leicester’s wedding was fixed to take place Annie and her father started for the great metropolis.
During his attendance on the General, Lewis had been thrown much into Annie’s society, and their intimacy had deepened, on the lady’s side, into feelings of the warmest esteem and friendship, while the gentleman became more and more convinced that his previous estimate of the fair sex was a completely mistaken one, and altogether to be condemned as the weakest and most fallacious theory that ever entered the brain of a hot-headed boy—by which opprobrious epithet he mentally stigmatised his six-months-ago self—and for at least a week after she had departed he felt as if something had gone wrong with the sun, so that it never shone properly.