of
Glencore--one can make a guess of what it portended. The King saw that
my Lady Glencore--for so we must call her--knew some very important
facts about the Queen, and wished to obtain them; and saw, too, that
certain scandals, as the phrase goes, which attached to her ladyship,
lay at another door. He fancied, not unreasonably, perhaps, that
Glencore would be glad to hear this exculpation of his wife; and he
calculated that by the boon of this intelligence he could gain over
Glencore to assist him in his project for a divorce. Don't you perceive,
Harcourt, of what an inestimable value it would prove, to possess one
single gentleman, one man or one woman of station, amid all this
rabble that they are summoning throughout the world to bring shame upon
England?"

"Then you incline to believe Lady Glencore blameless?" asked Harcourt,
anxiously.

"I think well of every one, my charming Colonel. It is the only true
philosophy in life. Be as severe as you please on all who injure
yourself, but always be lenient to the faults that only damage your
friends. You have no idea how much practical wisdom the maxim contains,
nor what a fund of charity it provides."

"I 'm ashamed to be so stupid, but I must come back to my old question.
Is all this story against Glencore's wife only a calumny?"

"And I must fall back upon my old remark, that all the rogues in the
world are in jail; the people you see walking about and at large
are unexceptionably honest,--every man of them. Ah, my dear
deputy-assistant, adjutant, or commissary, or whatever it be, can you
not perceive the more than folly of these perquisitions into character?
You don't require that the ice should be strong enough to sustain a
twenty-four pounder before you venture to put foot on it,--enough
that it is quite equal to your own weight; and so of the world at
large,--everybody, or nearly everybody, has virtue enough for all we
want with him. This English habit--for it is essentially English--of
eternally investigating everything, is like the policy of a man who
would fire a round-shot every morning at his house, to see if it were
well and securely built."

"I don't, I can't agree with you," cried Harcourt.

"Be it so, my dear fellow; only don't give me your reasons, and at least
I shall respect your motives."

"What would you do, then, in Glencore's place? Let me ask you that."

"You may as well inquire how I should behave if I were a quadruped.
Don't you per