“My lord,” cried out Esmond, “I am sure you are deceiving me, and that there is a quarrel between the Lord Mohun and you.”

“Quarrel—­pish!  We shall sup together this very night, and drink a bottle.  Every man is ill-humored who loses such a sum as I have lost.  But now ’tis paid, and my anger is gone with it.”

“Where shall we sup, sir?” says Harry.

“We!  Let some gentlemen wait till they are asked,” says my Lord Viscount with a laugh.  “You go to Duke Street, and see Mr. Betterton.  You love the play, I know.  Leave me to follow my own devices:  and in the morning we’ll breakfast together, with what appetite we may, as the play says.”

“By G—! my lord, I will not leave you this night,” says Harry Esmond.  “I think I know the cause of your dispute.  I swear to you ’tis nothing.  On the very day the accident befell Lord Mohun, I was speaking to him about it.  I know that nothing has passed but idle gallantry on his part.”

“You know that nothing has passed but idle gallantry between Lord Mohun and my wife,” says my lord, in a thundering voice—­“you knew of this and did not tell me?”

“I knew more of it than my dear mistress did herself, sir—­a thousand times more.  How was she, who was as innocent as a child, to know what was the meaning of the covert addresses of a villain?”

“A villain he is, you allow, and would have taken my wife away from me.”

“Sir, she is as pure as an angel,” cried young Esmond.

“Have I said a word against her?” shrieks out my lord.  “Did I ever doubt that she was pure?  It would have been the last day of her life when I did.  Do you fancy I think that she would go astray?  No, she hasn’t passion enough for that.  She neither sins nor forgives.  I know her temper—­and now I’ve lost her, by heaven I love her ten thousand times more than ever I did—­yes, when she was as young and as beautiful as an angel—­when she smiled at me in her old father’s house, and used to lie in wait for me there as I came from hunting—­when I used to fling my head down on her little knees and cry like a child on her lap—­and swear I would reform, and drink no more and play no more, and follow women no more; when all the men of the Court used to be following her—­when she used to look with her child more beautiful, by George, than the Madonna in the Queen’s Chapel.  I am not good like her, I know it.  Who is—­by heaven, who is?  I tired and wearied her, I know that very well.  I could not talk to her.  You men of wit and books could do that, and I couldn’t—­I felt I couldn’t.  Why, when you was but a boy of fifteen I could hear you two together talking your poetry and your books till I was in such a rage that I was fit to strangle you.  But you were always a good lad, Harry, and I loved you, you know I did.  And I felt she didn’t belong to me:  and the children don’t.  And I besotted myself, and gambled and drank, and took to all sorts of deviltries out of despair and fury.  And now comes this Mohun, and she likes him, I know she likes him.”