rike's Company people. You
understand--prospectuses. Tell me instantly if the Captain Evremonde in
it is Captain Lawson Evremonde. Pump Strike. Excuse vulgar words. Whether
he is not Lord Laxley's half-brother. Strike shall be of use to us.
Whether he is not mad. Captain E----'s address. Oh! when I think of
Strike--brute! and poor beautiful uncomplaining Carry and her shoulder!
But let us indeed most fervently hope that his Grace may be balm to it.
We must not pray for vengeance. It is sinful. Providence will inflict
that. Always know that Providence is quite sure to. It comforts
exceedingly.

'Oh, that Strike were altogether in the past tense! No knowing what the
Duke might do--a widower and completely subjugated. It makes my bosom
bound. The man tempts me to the wickedest Frenchy ideas. There!

We progress with dear venerable Mrs. Bonner. Truly pious--interested in
your Louisa. She dreads that my husband will try to convert me to his
creed. I can but weep and say--never!

'I need not say I have my circle. To hear this ridiculous boy Harry
Jocelyn grunt under my nose when he has led me unsuspectingly away from
company--Harriet! dearest! He thinks it a sigh! But there is no time for
laughing.

'My maxim in any house is--never to despise the good opinion of the
nonentities. They are the majority. I think they all look up to me. But
then of course you must fix that by seducing the stars. My diplomatist
praises my abilities--Sir John Loring my style--the rest follow and I do
not withhold my smiles, and they are happy, and I should be but that for
ungrateful Evan's sake I sacrificed my peace by binding myself to a
dreadful sort of half-story. I know I did not quite say it. It seems as
if Sir A.'s ghost were going to haunt me. And then I have the most
dreadful fears that what I have done has disturbed him in the other
world. Can it be so? It is not money or estates we took at all, dearest!
And these excellent young curates--I almost wish it was Protestant to
speak a word behind a board to them and imbibe comfort. For after all it
is nothing: and a word even from this poor thin mopy Mr. Parsley might be
relief to a poor soul in trouble. Catholics tell you that what you do in
a good cause is redeemable if not exactly right. And you know the
Catholic is the oldest Religion of the two. I would listen to the Pope,
staunch Protestant as I am, in preference to King Henry the Eighth.
Though, as a woman, I bear him no rancour, fo