ing spy on his wife. However,
such was the fact; she was going off again, and the marquis did play the
mean part. She walked down the parkroad, and, seeing the cloaked figure
of a man, she imagined him to be her Lothario, and very naturally, you
will own, fell into his arms. The gentleman in question was an
acquaintance of mine; and the less you follow our example the better for
you. It was a damnable period in morals! He told me that he saw the scene
from the gates, where he had his carriage-and-four ready. The old lord
burst out of an ambush on his wife and her supposed paramour; the lady
was imprisoned in her rescuer's arms, and my friend retired on tiptoe,
which was, I incline to think, the best thing he could do. Our morals
were abominable. Lady Edbury would never see Roy-Richmond after that, nor
the old lord neither. He doubled the sum he had intended to leave him,
though. I heard that he married a second young wife. Roy, I believe,
ended by marrying a great heiress, and reforming. He was an eloquent
fellow, and stood like a general in full uniform, cocked hat and
feathers; most amusing fellow at table; beat a Frenchman for anecdote.'

I spared Colonel Heddon the revelation of my relationship to his hero,
thanking his garrulity for interrupting me.

How I pitied him when I drove past the gates of the main route to
Innsbruck! For I was bound homeward: I should soon see England, green
cloudy England, the white cliffs, the meadows, the heaths! And I thanked
the colonel again in my heart for having done something to reconcile me
to the idea of that strange father of mine.

A banner-like stream of morning-coloured smoke rolled North-eastward as I
entered London, and I drove to Temple's chambers. He was in Court,
engaged in a case as junior to his father. Temple had become that radiant
human creature, a working man, then? I walked slowly to the Court, and
saw him there, hardly recognising him in his wig. All that he had to do
was to prompt his father in a case of collision at sea; the barque
Priscilla had run foul of a merchant brig, near the mouth of the Thames,
and though I did not expect it on hearing the vessel's name, it proved to
be no other than the barque Priscilla of Captain Jasper Welsh. Soon after
I had shaken Temple's hand, I was going through the same ceremony with
the captain himself, not at all changed in appearance, who blessed his
heart for seeing me, cried out that a beard and mustachios made a foreig