‘This paper,’ she said, ‘deserves to be burnt,’ and she was allowed to burn it—­money article, mining column as well—­on the pretext of an infamous anti-Tory leader, of which she herself composed the first sentence to shock the squire completely.  I had sight of that paper some time afterwards.  Richmond was in the field again, it stated, with mock flourishes.  But that was not the worst.  My grandfather’s name was down there, and mine, and Princess Ottilia’s.  My father’s connection with the court of Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld was alluded to as the latest, and next to his winning the heiress of Riversley, the most successful of his ventures, inasmuch as his son, if rumour was to be trusted, had obtained the promise of the hand of the princess.  The paragraph was an excerpt from a gossiping weekly journal, perhaps less malevolent than I thought it.  There was some fun to be got out of a man who, the journal in question was informed, had joined the arms of England and a petty German principality stamped on his plate and furniture.

My gratitude to Janet was fervent enough when I saw what she had saved me from.  I pressed her hand and held it.  I talked stupidly, but I made my cruel position intelligible to her, and she had the delicacy, on this occasion, to keep her sentiments regarding my father unuttered.  We sat hardly less than an hour side by side—­I know not how long hand in hand.  The end was an extraordinary trembling in the limb abandoned to me.  It seized her frame.  I would have detained her, but it was plain she suffered both in her heart and her pride.  Her voice was under fair command-more than mine was.  She counselled me to go to London, at once.  ’I would be off to London if I were you, Harry,’—­for the purpose of checking my father’s extravagances,—­would have been the further wording, which she spared me; and I thanked her, wishing, at the same time, that she would get the habit of using choicer phrases whenever there might, by chance, be a stress of emotion between us.  Her trembling, and her ‘I’d be off,’ came into unpleasant collision in the recollection.

I acknowledge to myself that she was a true and hearty friend.  She listened with interest to my discourse on the necessity of my being in Parliament before I could venture to propose formally for the hand of the princess, and undertook to bear the burden of all consequent negotiations with my grandfather.  If she would but have allowed me to speak of Temple, instead of saying, ‘Don’t, Harry, I like him so much!’ at the very mention of his name, I should have sincerely felt my indebtedness to her, and some admiration of her fine spirit and figure besides.  I could not even agree with my aunt Dorothy that Janet was handsome.  When I had to grant her a pardon I appreciated her better.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

MY BANKERS’ BOOK

The squire again did honour to Janet’s eulogy and good management of him.