Days afterwards, when Esmond was brought out of a fever which he had, and which attacked him that night pretty sharply, the honest keeper’s wife brought her patient a handkerchief fresh washed and ironed, and at the corner of which he recognized his mistress’s well-known cipher and viscountess’s crown.  “The lady had bound it round his arm when he fainted, and before she called for help,” the keeper’s wife said.  “Poor lady! she took on sadly about her husband.  He has been buried to-day, and a many of the coaches of the nobility went with him—­my Lord Marlborough’s and my Lord Sunderland’s, and many of the officers of the Guards, in which he served in the old King’s time; and my lady has been with her two children to the King at Kensington, and asked for justice against my Lord Mohun, who is in hiding, and my Lord the Earl of Warwick and Holland, who is ready to give himself up and take his trial.”

Such were the news, coupled with assertions about her own honesty and that of Molly her maid, who would never have stolen a certain trumpery gold sleeve-button of Mr. Esmond’s that was missing after his fainting fit, that the keeper’s wife brought to her lodger.  His thoughts followed to that untimely grave, the brave heart, the kind friend, the gallant gentleman, honest of word and generous of thought, (if feeble of purpose, but are his betters much stronger than he?) who had given him bread and shelter when he had none; home and love when he needed them; and who, if he had kept one vital secret from him, had done that of which he repented ere dying—­a wrong indeed, but one followed by remorse, and occasioned by almost irresistible temptation.

Esmond took his handkerchief when his nurse left him, and very likely kissed it, and looked at the bauble embroidered in the corner.  “It has cost thee grief enough,” he thought, “dear lady, so loving and so tender.  Shall I take it from thee and thy children?  No, never!  Keep it, and wear it, my little Frank, my pretty boy.  If I cannot make a name for myself, I can die without one.  Some day, when my dear mistress sees my heart, I shall be righted; or if not here or now, why, elsewhere; where Honor doth not follow us, but where Love reigns perpetual.”

’Tis needless to relate here, as the reports of the lawyers already have chronicled them, the particulars or issue of that trial which ensued upon my Lord Castlewood’s melancholy homicide.  Of the two lords engaged in that sad matter, the second, my Lord the Earl of Warwick and Holland, who had been engaged with Colonel Westbury, and wounded by him, was found not guilty by his peers, before whom he was tried (under the presidence of the Lord Steward, Lord Somers); and the principal, the Lord Mohun, being found guilty of the manslaughter, (which, indeed, was forced upon him, and of which he repented most sincerely,) pleaded his clergy, and so was discharged without any penalty.  The widow of the slain nobleman, as it was told us