s: if the iniquity was
committed, his hands would be clean of it. Mr. Adister spoke by way of
prelude to the sketch of 'this prince' whose title was a lurid delusion.
Patrick heard of a sexagenarian rake and Danube adventurer, in person
a description of falcon-Caliban, containing his shagginess in a frogged
hussar-jacket and crimson pantaloons, with hook-nose, fox-eyes, grizzled
billow of frowsy moustache, and chin of a beast of prey. This fellow,
habitually one of the dogs lining the green tables of the foreign Baths,
snapping for gold all day and half the night, to spend their winnings
in debauchery and howl threats of suicide, never fulfilled early enough,
when they lost, claimed his princedom on the strength of his father's
murder of a reigning prince and sitting in his place for six months,
till a merited shot from another pretender sent him to his account.
'What do you say to such a nest of assassins, and one of them, an
outcast and blackleg, asking an English gentleman to acknowledge him as
a member of his family! I have,' said Mr. Adister, 'direct information
that this gibbet-bird is conspiring to dethrone--they call it--the
present reigning prince, and the proceeds of my daughter's estates
are, by her desire--if she has not written under compulsion of the
scoundrel--intended to speed their blood-mongering. There goes a
Welshwoman's legacy to the sea, with a herd of swine with devils in
them!'

Mr. Camminy kept his head bent, his hand on his glass of port. Patrick
stared, and the working of his troubled brows gave the unhappy gentleman
such lean comfort as he was capable of taking. Patrick in sooth was
engaged in the hard attempt at the same time to do two of the most
difficult things which can be proposed to the ingenuity of sensational
youth: he was trying to excuse a respected senior for conduct that he
could not approve, while he did inward battle to reconcile his feelings
with the frightful addition to his hoard of knowledge: in other words,
he sought strenuously to mix the sketch of the prince with the dregs of
the elixir coming from the portrait of Adiante; and now she sank into
obscurity behind the blackest of brushes, representing her incredible
husband; and now by force of some natural light she broke through
the ugly mist and gave her adored the sweet lines and colours of the
features he had lost. There was an ebb and flow of the struggle, until,
able to say to himself that he saw her clearly as thoug