spot. A public inquiry is inevitable, and the knowledge of his arrival
in the country will precipitate matters. From all I hear I much fear
that there is no chance of the result being favourable to him. You have
asked me to write the unvarnished truth, to be brutal even, remember.
His delinquencies are painfully notorious, and I apprehend that the last
sixpence he owns will be answerable. His landed estate I am told can
also be confiscated, in the event of an impeachment at the bar of the
House of Lords, as in the Warren Hastings case. But as yet nobody seems
clear as to the form which the investigation will take. In reply to your
inquiry as to what would have happened if his lordship had died on the
passage home, I believe I am justified in saying the scandal would have
been allowed to die with him. He has contrived to provoke powerful
animosities both in the Cabinet and at the India House, and there is, I
fear, an intention to pursue the inquiry to the bitter end.'

Assurances of the writer's sympathy followed these harsh truths. But to
this polite commonplace her ladyship paid no attention. Her mind was
intent on hard facts, the dismal probabilities of the near future.

'If he had died upon the passage home!' she repeated. 'Would to God that
he had so died, and that my son's name and fortune could be saved.'

The innocent child who had never given her an hour's care; the one
creature she loved with all the strength of her proud nature--his future
was to be blighted by his father's misdoings-overshadowed by shame and
dishonour in the very dawn of life. It was a wicked wish--an unnatural
wish to find room in a woman's breast; but the wish was there. Would to
God he had died before the ship touched an English port.

But he was living, and would have to face his accusers--and she, his