--" the parson paused.

"Since when?" asked Riccabocca, with evident curiosity. Mr. Dale seemed
embarrassed. "Excuse me," said he, "it is many years ago; and in short
the opinion I then formed of the nobleman you named was based upon
circumstances which I cannot communicate."

The punctilious Italian bowed in silence, but he still looked as if he
should have liked to prosecute inquiry.

After a pause he said, "Whatever your impression respecting Lord
L'Estrange, there is nothing, I suppose, which would lead you to doubt
his honour, or reject his testimonial in my favour?"

"According to fashionable morality," said Mr. Dale, rather precisely,
"I know of nothing that could induce me to suppose that Lord L'Estrange
would not, in this instance, speak the truth. And he has unquestionably
a high reputation as a soldier, and a considerable position in the
world." Therewith the parson took his leave. A few days afterwards, Dr.
Riccabocca inclosed to the squire, in a blank envelope, a letter he
had received from Harley L'Estrange. It was evidently intended for
the squire's eye, and to serve as a voucher for the Italian's
respectability; but this object was fulfilled, not in the coarse form of
a direct testimonial, but with a tact and delicacy which seemed to show
more than the fine breeding to be expected from one in Lord L'Estrange's
station. It evinced that most exquisite of all politeness which comes
from the heart; a certain tone of affectionate respect (which even the
homely sense of the squire felt, intuitively, proved far more in favour
of Riccabocca than the most elaborate certificate of his qualities and
antecedents) pervaded the whole, and would have sufficed in itself to
remove all scruples from a mind much more suspicious and exacting than
that of the Squire of Hazeldean. But, to and behold! an obstacle
now occurred to the parson, of which he ought to have thought long
before,--namely, the Papistical religion of the Italian. Dr. Riccabocca
was professedly a Roman Catholic. He so little obtruded that fact--and,
indeed, had assented so readily to any animadversions upon the
superstition and priestcraft which, according to Protestants, are the
essential characteristics of Papistical communities--that it was not
till the hymeneal torch, which brings all faults to light, was fairly
illumined for the altar, that the remembrance of a faith so cast into
the shade burst upon the conscience of the parson. The first idea tha