'I don't know. The anonymous libeller could really have done no harm had it not been that there were organs that were ready to inform the world of his attacks upon this lady; the letters could have been burnt and none been any the wiser, and in time the annoyance would have ceased.'
'Do you think the author of these things will ever be found out?'
'I should hardly think so. It is clearly the outcome of malice on the part of some man or woman who has either a grudge against Mr. Hawtrey, his daughter, or Lord Halliburn, or of some one interested in breaking off Miss Hawtrey's engagement.'
'I don't think Lord Halliburn has behaved nicely in the matter,' Mrs. Dean said. 'If he had shown himself perfectly indifferent to the affair from the first, people would never have talked so much. It is his palpable annoyance that has more than confirmed these gossiping rumours.'
'Between ourselves, Mrs. Dean, although I should not at all mind his knowing it, my opinion is, that Halliburn is a cad.'
Mrs. Dean laughed. 'It is next door to blasphemy to speak in society of a peer as a cad, Captain Hampton; still, I am not at all sure that you are wrong. But I must be going; my husband has been making signs to me for the last ten minutes.'
CHAPTER VI
Captain Hampton had spoken harshly of Lord Halliburn, but then he was scarcely able to appreciate the difficulties of the young nobleman. Lord Halliburn was in many respects a model peer. His talents were more than respectable, his life was irreproachable, he was wealthy and yet not a spendthrift. The title was of recent creation, his father being the first holder of the earldom, having been raised to that rank for his political services to the Whig party, just as his grandfather, a wealthy manufacturer, had been rewarded for the bestowal of a park, a public library, and other benefactions to his native town, by a baronetcy. And yet Lord Halliburn supported his position as worthily as if the earldom had come down in an unbroken line from the days of the Henrys, and was held up as an example to less tranquil and studious spirits.
He had scarcely been popular at Eton, for he avoided both the river and the playing fields, and was one of a set who kept aloof from the rest, talked together upon politics, philosophy, and poetry, held mildly democratic opinions as to the improvement of the existing state of things, were particular about their dress, and subdued in their talk. That they were looked upon with something like contempt by those who regarded a place in the eight or the eleven as conferring the proudest distinction that could be aimed at, they regarded not only with complacency, but almost with pride, and privately considered themselves to belong to a far higher order than these rough athletes. At college, his mode of life was but little altered. He belonged to a small coterie who lived apart from the rest, held academic discussions in each others' rooms upon many abstruse subjects, were familiar with Kant, regarded the German thinkers with respectful admiration, quoted John Stuart Mill and Spencer as the masters of English thought, were mildly enthusiastic over Carlyle and Ruskin, and had leanings towards Comte and Swedenborg.