he names of these newspapers,
and your lordship, when pressed for a reply, sent to me--that copy of
'Everybody's Business.'

"I ask your lordship to ask yourself whether, so far, I have overstated
anything. Did not that paper come to me as the only sample you were able
to send me of criticism made on my conduct in the metropolitan press? No
doubt my conduct was handled there in very severe terms. No doubt the
insinuations, if true,--or if of such kind as to be worthy of credit with
your lordship, whether true or false,--were severe, plain-spoken, and
damning. The language was so abominable, so vulgar, so nauseous, that I
will not trust myself to repeat it. Your lordship, probably, when sending
me one copy, kept another. Now, I must ask your lordship,--and I must beg
of your lordship for a reply,--whether the periodical itself has such a
character as to justify your lordship in founding a complaint against a
clergyman on its unproved statements, and also whether the facts of the
case, as they were known to you, were not such as to make your lordship
well aware that the insinuations were false. Before these ribald words
were printed, your lordship had heard all the facts of the case from my
own lips. Your lordship had known me and my character for, I think, a
dozen years. You know the character that I bear among others as a
clergyman, a schoolmaster, and a gentleman. You have been aware how great
is the friendship I have felt for the unfortunate gentleman whose career
is in question, and for the lady who bears his name. When you read those
abominable words did they induce your lordship to believe that I had been
guilty of the inexpressible treachery of making love to the poor lady
whose misfortunes I was endeavouring to relieve, and of doing so almost in
my wife's presence?

"I defy you to have believed them. Men are various, and their minds work
in different ways,--but the same causes will produce the same effects.
You have known too much of me to have thought it possible that I should
have done as I was accused. I should hold a man to be no less than mad
who could so have believed, knowing as much as your lordship knew. Then
how am I to reconcile to my idea of your lordship's character the fact
that you should have sent me that paper? What am I to think of the
process going on in your lordship's mind when your lordship could have
brought yourself to use a narrative which you must have known to be false,