could manage her well enough, if, unworthy as she is of any consideration, I had not still some regard for an illustrious family, that would be distracted were I to resent such an injury as it deserves.  In this particular you are interested yourself:  you are my friend, and I make you my confidant in an affair of the greatest imaginable delicacy:  let us then consult together what is proper to be done in so perplexing and disagreeable a situation.”

Hamilton, if possible, more astonished, and more confounded than himself, was far from being in a proper state to afford him advice on the present occasion:  he listened to nothing but jealousy, and breathed nothing but revenge; but these emotions being somewhat abated, in hopes that there might be calumny, or at least exaggeration in the charges against Lady Chesterfield, he desired her husband to suspend his resolutions, until he was more fully informed of the fact; assuring him, however, that if he found the circumstances such as he had related, he should regard and consult no other interest than his.

Upon this they parted; and Hamilton found, on the first inquiry, that almost the whole court was informed of the adventure, to which every one added something in relating it.  Vexation and resentment, inflamed his heart, and by degrees extinguished every remnant of his former passion.

He might easily have seen her, and have made her such reproaches as a man is generally inclined to do, on such occasions; but he was too much enraged to enter into any detail which might have led to an explanation:  he considered himself as the only person essentially injured in this affair; for he could never bring his mind to think that the injuries of the husband could be placed in competition with those of the lover.

He hastened to Lord Chesterfield, in the transport of his passion, and told him that he had heard enough to induce him to give such advice, as he should follow himself in the same situation, and that if he wished to save a woman so strongly prepossessed, and who perhaps had not yet lost all her innocence, though she had totally lost her reason, he ought not to delay one single instant, but immediately to carry her into the country with the greatest possible expedition, without allowing her the least time to recover her surprise.

Lord Chesterfield readily agreed to follow this advice, which he had already considered as the only counsel a friend could give him; but his lady who did not suspect he had made this last discovery of her conduct, thought he was joking with her, when he told her to prepare for going into the country in two days:  she was the more induced to think so as it was in the very middle of an extremely severe winter; but she soon perceived that he was in earnest:  she knew from the air and manner of her husband that he thought he had sufficient reason to treat her in this imperious style; and finding all her relations serious and cold to her complaint, she had no hope left in this universally abandoned situation but in the tenderness of Hamilton.  She imagined she should hear from him the cause of her misfortunes, of which she was still totally ignorant, and that his love would invent some means or other to prevent a journey, which she flattered herself would be even more affecting to him than to herself; but she was expecting pity from a crocodile.