reature in affliction seems always doubly beautiful to me,"
says the poor captain, who indeed was but too often in a state to see
double, and so checked he resumed the interrupted thread of his story. "As
I spoke my business," Mr. Steele said, "and narrated to your mistress what
all the world knows, and the other side hath been eager to
acknowledge--that you had tried to put yourself between the two lords, and
to take your patron's quarrel on your own point; I recounted the general
praises of your gallantry, besides my Lord Mohun's particular testimony to
it; I thought the widow listened with some interest, and her eyes--I have
never seen such a violet, Harry--looked up at mine once or twice. But after
I had spoken on this theme for a while she suddenly broke away with a cry
of grief. 'I would to God, sir,' she said, 'I had never heard that word
gallantry which you use, or known the meaning of it. My lord might have
been here but for that; my home might be happy; my poor boy have a father.
It was what you gentlemen call gallantry came into my home, and drove my
husband on to the cruel sword that killed him. You should not speak the
word to a Christian woman, sir--a poor widowed mother of orphans, whose
home was happy until the world came into it--the wicked godless world, that
takes the blood of the innocent, and lets the guilty go free.'

"As the afflicted lady spoke in this strain, sir," Mr. Steele continued,
"it seemed as if indignation moved her, even more than grief.
'Compensation!' she went on passionately, her cheeks and eyes kindling;
'what compensation does your world give the widow for her husband, and the
children for the murderer of their father? The wretch who did the deed has
not even a punishment. Conscience! what conscience has he, who can enter
the house of a friend, whisper falsehood and insult to a woman that never
harmed him, and stab the kind heart that trusted him? My lord--my Lord
Wretch, my Lord Villain's, my Lord Murderer's peers meet to try him, and
they dismiss him with a word or two of reproof, and send him into the
world again, to pursue women with lust and falsehood, and to murder
unsuspecting guests that harbour him. That day, my lord--my Lord
Murderer--(I will never name him)--was let loose, a woman was executed at
Tyburn for stealing in a shop. But a man may rob another of his life, or a
lady of her honour, and shall pay no penalty! I take my child, run to the
throne, and on my knees ask f