He was so gratified—he always knew she cared for her old man, little Jennie—she was not demonstrative, all the better perhaps for that; and here, in this delightful letter, so grateful, so sad, so humble, it was all confessed—demonstrated, at last; and old General Lennox thought infinitely better of himself, and far more adoringly of his wife than ever, and was indescribably proud and happy. Hitherto his good angel had had it all his own way; the other spirit was now about to take his turn—touched him on the elbow and presented Monsieur Varbarriere's letter, with a dark smile.
"Near forgetting this, by Jove!" said the old gentleman with the white moustache and eyebrows, taking the letter in his gnarled pink fingers.
"What the devil can the fellow mean? I think he's a fool," said the General, very pale and stern, when he had read the letter twice through.
If the people at the other side had been studying the transition of human countenance, they would have had a treat in the General's, now again presented at his drawing-room window, where he stood leaning grimly on his knuckles.
Still oftener, and more microscopically, was this letter spelled over than the other.
"It can't possibly refer to Jane. It can't. I put that out of my head—quite," said the poor General energetically to himself, with a short wave of his hand like a little sabre-cut in the air.
But what could it be? He had no kinsman near enough in blood to "affect his honour." But these French fellows had such queer phrases. The only transaction he could think of was the sale of his black charger in Calcutta for two hundred guineas, to that ill-conditioned fellow, Colonel Bardell, who, he heard, had been grumbling about that bargain, as he did about every other.
"I should not be surprised if he said I cheated him about that horse!"
And he felt quite obliged to Colonel Bardell for affording this hypothesis.
"Yes, Bardell was coming to England—possibly at Marlowe now. He knows Sir Jekyl. Egad, that's the very thing. He's been talking; and this officious old French bourgeois thinks he's doing a devilish polite thing in telling me what a suspected dog I am."
The General laughed, and breathed a great sigh of relief, and recalled all the cases he could bring up in which fellows had got into scrapes unwittingly about horse-flesh, and how savagely fellows sometimes spoke when they did not like their bargains.
CHAPTER XXXV.
The Bishop at Marlowe.
So he laboured in favour of his hypothesis with an uneasy sort of success; but, for a few seconds, on one sore point of his heart had there been a pressure, new, utterly agonising, and there remained the sense of contusion.
The General took his hat, and came and walked off briskly into the city a long way, thinking he had business; but when he reached the office, preferring another day—wishing to be back at Marlowe—wishing to see Varbarriere—longing to know the worst.
At last he turned into a city coffee-house, and wrote a reply on a quarto sheet of letter-paper to Monsieur Varbarriere. He was minded first to treat the whole thing with a well-bred contempt, and simply to mention that as he expected soon to be at Marlowe, he would not give Monsieur Varbarriere the trouble of making an appointment elsewhere.
But, seated in his box, he read Monsieur Varbarriere's short letter over again before committing himself, and it struck him that it was not an intimation to be trifled with—it had a certain gravity which did not lose its force by frequent reading. The gentleman himself, too—reserved, shrewd, with an odd mixture of the unctuous and the sardonic—his recollection of this person, the writer, came unpleasantly in aid of the serious impression which his letter was calculated to make; and he read again—
"I have certain circumstances to lay before you which nearly affect your honour."
The words smote his heart again with a tremendous augury; somehow they would not quite fit his hypothesis about the horse, but it might be something else. Was there any lady who might conceive herself jilted? Who could guess what it might be?
Jennie's letter he read then again in his box, with the smell of beef-steaks, the glitter of pewter pots, and the tread of waiters about him.
Yes, it was—he defied the devil himself to question it—an affectionate, loving, grateful letter. And Lady Alice had gone to Marlowe, and was staying there—Lady Alice Redcliffe, that stiff, austere duenna—Jane's kinswoman. He was glad of it, and often thinking of it. But, no—oh! no—it could not possibly refer to Jane: upon that point he had perfectly made up his mind.
Well, with his pen between his fingers, he considered when he could go, and where he should meet this vulgar Frenchman. He could not leave London to-morrow, nor next day, and the day following he had to give evidence on the question of compensation to that native prince, and so on: so at last he wrote, naming the nearest day he could command, and requesting, in a postscript which he opened the letter to add, that Monsieur Varbarriere would be so very good as to let him know a little more distinctly to what specific subject his letter referred, as he had in vain taxed his recollection for the slightest clue to his meaning; and although he was perfectly satisfied that he could not have the smallest difficulty in clearing up anything that could possibly be alleged against him as a soldier or a gentleman—having, he thanked Heaven, accomplished his career with honour—he yet could not feel quite comfortable until he heard something more explicit.
As the General, with this letter in his pocket, was hurrying to the post-office, the party at Marlowe were admiring a glorious sunset, and Monsieur Varbarriere was describing to Lady Jane Lennox some gorgeous effects of sunlight which he had witnessed from Lisbon on the horizon of the Atlantic.
The Bishop had already arrived, and was in his dressing-room, and Dives was more silent and thoughtful than usual.
Yes, the Bishop had arrived. He was venerable, dignified, dapper, with, for his time of life, a wonderfully shapely leg in his black silk stocking. There was in his manner and tones that suavity which reminds one at the same time of heaven and the House of Lords. He did not laugh. He smiled and bowed sometimes. There was a classical flavour in his conversation with gentlemen, and he sometimes conversed with ladies, his leg crossed horizontally, the ankle resting on his knee, while he mildly stroked the shapely limb I have mentioned, and murmured well-bred Christianity, to which, as well as to his secular narratives, the ladies listened respectfully.
Don't suppose he was a hypocrite or a Pharisee. He was as honest as most men, and better than many Christians. He was a bachelor, and wealthy; but if he had amassed a good deal of public money, he had also displayed a good deal of public spirit, and had done many princely and even some kind actions. His family were not presentable, making a livelihood by unmentionable practices, such as shop-keeping and the like. Still he cut them with moderation, having maintained affable though clandestine relations with his two maiden aunts, who lived and died in Thames Street, and having twice assisted a nephew, though he declined seeing him, who was a skipper of a Russian brig.
He was a little High-Church. But though a disciplinarian in ecclesiastical matters, and with notions about self-mortification, his rule as master of the great school he had once governed had been kindly and popular as well as firm. I do not know exactly what interest got him his bishopric. Perhaps it was his reputation only; and that he was thinking of duty, and his fasts, and waked in his cell one morning with a mitre on instead of his nightcap. The Trappist, mayhap, in digging his grave had lighted on a pot of gold.
"I had no idea," exclaimed Miss Blunket, when the Bishop's apron and silk stockings had moved with the Rev. Dives Marlowe to the opposite extremity of the drawing-room, where the attentive Rector was soon deep in demonstrations, which evidently interested the right reverend prelate much, drawn from some manuscript notes of an ancestor of Dives's who had filled that see, which had long known him no more, and where he had been sharp in his day in looking up obscure rights and neglected revenues.
"I had no idea the Bishop was so young; he's by no means an old-looking man; and so very admirable a prelate—is not he?"
"He has neglected one of St. Paul's conditions though," said Sir Jekyl; "but you will not think the worse of him for that. It may be mended, you know."
"What's that?" inquired Miss Blunket.
"Why, he's not the husband of one wife."
"Nonsense, you wretch!" cried Miss Blunket, with a giggle, jerking a violet which she was twiddling between her fingers at the Baronet.
"He has written a great deal, has not he?" continued Miss Blunket. "His tract on mortification has gone to fifteen thousand copies, I see by the newspaper."
"I wonder he has never married," interposed Lady Blunket, drowsily, with her usual attention to the context.
"I wonder he never tried it as a species of mortification," suggested Sir Jekyl.
"You horrid Vandal! Do you hear him, mamma?" exclaimed Miss Blunket.
Lady Blunket rather testily—for she neither heard nor understood very well, and her daughter's voice was shrill—asked—
"What is it? You are always making mountains of molehills, my dear, and startling one."
Old Lady Alice Redcliffe's entrance at this moment made a diversion. She entered, tall, grey, and shaky, leaning on the arm of pretty Beatrix, and was encountered near the door by the right reverend prelate, who greeted her with a dignified and apostolic gallantry, which contrasted finely with Sir Jekyl's jaunty and hilarious salutation.
The Bishop was very much changed since she had seen him last. He, no doubt, thought the same of her. Neither intimated this little reflection to the other. Each estimated, with something of wonder and pity, the other's decay, and neither appropriated the lesson.
"I dare say you think me very much altered," said Lady Alice, so soon as she had made herself comfortable on the ottoman.
"I was about putting the same inquiry of myself, Lady Alice; but, alas! why should we? 'Never continueth in one stay,' you know; change is the universal law, and the greatest, last."
The excellent prelate delivered this ex cathedrâ, as an immortal to a mortal. It was his duty to impress old Lady Alice, and he courteously included himself, being a modest priest, who talked of sin and death as if bishops were equally subject to them with other men.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Old Scenes recalled.
At dinner the prelate, who sat beside Lady Alice, conversed in the same condescending spirit, and with the same dignified humility, upon all sorts of subjects—upon the new sect, the Huggletonians, whom, with doubtful originality, but considerable emphasis, he likened to "lost sheep."
"Who's lost his sheep, my lord?" inquired Sir Paul Blunket across the table.
"I spoke metaphorically, Sir Paul. The Huggletonians, the sheep who should have been led by the waters of comfort, have been suffered to stray into the wilderness."
"Quite so—I see. Shocking name that—the Huggletonians. I should not like to be a Huggletonian, egad!" said Sir Paul Blunket, and drank some wine. "Lost sheep, to be sure—yes; but that thing of bringing sheep to water—you see—it's a mistake. When a wether takes to drinking water, it's a sign he's got the rot."
The Bishop gently declined his head, and patiently allowed this little observation to blow over.
Sir Paul Blunket, having delivered it, merely added, after a decent pause, as he ate his dinner—
"Dartbroke mutton this—five years old—eh?"
"Yes. I hope you like it," answered his host.
Sir Paul Blunket, having a bit in his mouth, grunted politely—
"Only for your own table, though?" he added, when he'd swallowed it.
"That's all," answered Sir Jekyl.
"Never pay at market, you know," said Sir Paul Blunket. "I consider any sheep kept beyond two years as lost."
"A lost sheep, and sell him as a Huggletonian," rejoined Sir Jekyl.
"It is twenty years," murmured the Bishop in Lady Alice's ear, for he preferred not hearing that kind of joke, "since I sate in this parlour."
"Ha!" sighed Lady Alice.
"Long before that I used, in poor Sir Harry's time, to be here a good deal—a hospitable, kind man, in the main."
"I never liked him," croaked Lady Alice, and wiped her mouth.
They sat so very close to Sir Jekyl that the Bishop merely uttered a mild ejaculation, and bowed toward his plate.
"The arrangements of this room—the portraits—are just what I remember them."
"Yes, and you were here—let me see—just thirty years since, when Sir Harry died—weren't you?"
"So I was, my dear Lady Alice—very true," replied the Bishop in his most subdued tones, and he threw his head back a little, and nearly closed his eyes; and she fancied he meant, in a dignified way, to say, "I should prefer not speaking of those particular recollections while we sit so near our host." The old lady was much of the same mind, and said to him quietly—
"I'll ask you a few questions by-and-by. You remember Donica Gwynn. She's living with me now—the housekeeper, you know."
"Yes, perfectly, a very nice-looking quiet young woman—how is she?"
"A dried-up old woman now, but very well," said Lady Alice.
"Yes, to be sure; she must be elderly now," said he, hastily; and the Bishop mentally made up one of those little sums in addition, the result of which surprises us sometimes in our elderly days so oddly.
When the party transferred themselves to the drawing-room, Lady Alice failed to secure the Bishop, who was seized by the Rev. Dives Marlowe and carried into a recess—Sir Jekyl having given his clerical brother the key of a cabinet in which were deposited more of the memoranda, and a handsome collection of the official and legal correspondence of that episcopal ancestor whose agreeable MSS. had interested the Bishop so much before dinner.
Jekyl, indeed, was a good-natured brother. As a match-making mother will get the proper persons under the same roof, he had managed this little meeting at Marlowe. When the ladies went away to the drawing-room, he had cried—
"Dives, I want you here for a moment," and so he placed him on the chair which Lady Jane Lennox had occupied beside him, and what was more to the purpose, beside the Bishop; and, as Dives was a good scholar, well made up on controversies, with a very pretty notion of ecclesiastical law and a turn for Latin verse, he and the prelate were soon in a state of very happy and intimate confidence. This cabinet, too, was what the game of chess is to the lovers—a great opportunity—a seclusion; and Dives knowing all about the papers, was enabled really to interest the Bishop very keenly.
So Lady Alice, who wanted to talk with him, was doomed to a jealous isolation, until that friend, of whom she was gradually coming to think very highly indeed, Monsieur Varbarriere, drew near, and they fell into conversation, first on the recent railway collision, and then on the fruit and flower show, and next upon the Bishop.
They both agreed what a charming and venerable person he was, and then Lady Alice said—
"Sir Harry Marlowe, I told you—the father, you know, of Jekyl there," and she dropped her voice as she named him, "was in possession at the time when the deed affecting my beloved son's rights was lost."
"Yes, madame."
"And it was the Bishop there who attended him on his death-bed."
"Ho!" exclaimed M. Varbarriere, looking more curiously for a moment at that dapper little gentleman in the silk apron.
"They said he heard a great deal from poor wretched Sir Harry. I have never had an opportunity of asking him in private about it, but I mean to-morrow, please Heaven."
"It may be, madame, in the highest degree important," said Monsieur Varbarriere, emphatically.
"How can it be? My son is dead."
"Your son is"——and M. Varbarriere, who was speaking sternly and with a pallid face, like a man deeply excited, suddenly checked himself, and said—
"Yes, very true, your son is dead. Yes, madame, he is dead."
Old Lady Alice looked at him with a bewildered and frightened gaze.
"In Heaven's name, sir, what do you mean?"
"Mean—mean—why, what have I said?" exclaimed Monsieur Varbarriere, very tartly, and looking still more uncomfortable.
"I did not say you had said anything, but you do mean something."
"No, madame, I forgot something; the tragedy to which you referred is not to be supposed to be always as present to the mind of another as it naturally is to your own. We forget in a moment of surprise many things of which at another time we need not to be reminded, and so it happened with me."
Monsieur Varbarriere stood up and fiddled with his gold double eye-glasses, and seemed for a while disposed to add more on that theme, but, after a pause, said—
"And so it was to the Bishop that Sir Harry Marlowe communicated his dying wish that the green chamber should be shut up?"
"Yes, to him; and I have heard that more passed than is suspected, but of that I know nothing; only I mean to put the question to him directly, when next I can see him alone."
Monsieur Varbarriere again looked with a curious scrutiny at the Bishop, and then he inquired—
"He is a prelate, no doubt, who enjoys a high reputation for integrity?"
"This I know, that he would not for worlds utter an untruth," replied Lady Alice.
"What a charming person is Lady Jane Lennox!" exclaimed Monsieur Varbarriere, suddenly diverging.
"H'm! do you think so? Well, yes, she is very much admired."
"It is not often you see a pair so unequal in years so affectionately attached," said Monsieur Varbarriere.
"I have never seen her husband, and I can't, therefore, say how they get on together; but I'm glad to hear you say so. Jane has a temper, you know, which every one might not get on with; that is," she added, fearing lest she had gone a little too far, "sometimes it is not quite pleasant."
"No doubt she was much admired and much pursued," observed Varbarriere.
"Yes, I said she was admired," answered Lady Alice, drily.
"How charming she looks, reading her book at this moment!" exclaimed Varbarriere.
She was leaning back on an ottoman, with a book in her hand; her rich wavy hair, her jewels and splendid dress, her beautiful braceleted arms, and exquisitely haughty features, and a certain negligence in her pose, recalled some of those voluptuous portraits of the beauties of the Court of Charles II.
Sir Jekyl was seated on the other side of the cushioned circle, leaning a little across, and talking volubly, and, as it seemed, earnestly. It is one of those groups in which, marking the silence of the lady and the serious earnestness of her companion, and the flush of both countenances, one concludes, if there be nothing to forbid, that the talk is at least romantic.
Lady Alice was reserved, however; she merely said—
"Yes, Jane looks very well; she's always well got up."
Monsieur Varbarriere saw her glance with a shrewd little frown of scrutiny at the Baronet and Lady Jane, and he knew what was passing in her mind; she, too, suspected what was in his, for she glanced at him, and their eyes met for a moment and were averted. Each knew what the other was thinking; so Lady Alice said—
"For an old gentleman, Jekyl is the most romantic I know; when he has had his wine, I think he'd flirt with any woman alive. I dare say he's boring poor Jane to death, if we knew but all. She can't read her book. I assure you I've seen him, when nobody better was to be had, making love to old Susan Blunket—Miss Blunket there—after dinner, of course: and by the time he has played his rubber of whist he's quite a sane man, and continues so until he comes in after dinner next evening. We all know Jekyl, and never mind him." Having thus spoken, she asked Monsieur Varbarriere whether he intended a long stay in England, and a variety of similar questions.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
In which Lady Alice pumps the Bishop.
Lady Jane Lennox, who complained of a headache, departed early for her room. The Baronet's passion for whist returned, and he played with more than his usual spirit and hilarity; Monsieur Varbarriere, his partner, was also in great force, and made some very creditable sallies between the deals. All went, in fact, merry as a marriage-bell. But in that marriage-bell booms unmarked the selfsame tone which thrills in the funeral-knell. There was its somewhat of bitter rising probably in each merry soul in that gay room. Black care walked silently among those smiling guests, and on an unseen salver presented to each his sprig of rue or rosemary. Another figure also, lank, obsequious, smirking dolorously, arrayed in the Marlowe livery, came in with a bow, and stood with an hour-glass in his long yellow claw at the back of Sir Jekyl's chair; you might see the faint lights of his hollow eyes reflected on the Baronet's cards.
"A little chilly to-night, is not it?" said Sir Jekyl, and shook his shoulders. "Have we quite light enough, do you think?"
In that serene company there were two hearts specially sore, each with a totally different anguish.
In Lady Alice's old ears continually beat these words, "Your son is"——ending, like an interrupted dream, in nothing. Before her eyes was Varbarriere's disturbed countenance as he dropped the curtain over his meaning, and affected to have forgotten the death of Guy Deverell.
"Your son is"——Merciful Heaven! could he have meant living?
Could that shape she had seen in its coffin, with the small blue mark in its serene forehead, where the bullet had entered, been a simulacrum—not her son—a cast—a fraud?
Her reason told her loudly such a thought was mere insanity; and yet what could that sudden break in Varbarriere's sentence have been meant to conceal, and what did that recoiling look imply?
"Your son is"——It was for ever going on. She knew there was something to tell, something of which M. Varbarriere was thoroughly cognisant, and about which nothing could ever induce him to open his lips.
If it was not "your son is living," she cared not what else it might be, and that—could it?—no, it could not be. A slight hectic touched each thin cheek, otherwise she looked as usual. But as she gazed dreamily over the fender, with clouded eyes, her temples were throbbing, and she felt sometimes quite wild, and ready to start to her feet and adjure that awful whist-player to disclose all he knew about her dead boy.
Beatrix was that evening seated near the fireplace, and Drayton making himself agreeable, with as small trouble as possible to himself. Drayton! Well, he was rather amusing—cleverish—well enough up upon those subjects which are generally supposed to interest young ladies; and, with an affectation of not caring, really exerting himself to be entertaining. Did he succeed? If you were to judge by her animated looks and tones, you would have said very decidedly. Drayton's self-love was in a state of comfort, even of luxury, that evening. But was there anything in the triumph?
A pale face, at the farther end of the room, with a pair of large, dark, romantic eyes, a face that had grown melancholy of late, she saw every moment, though she had not once looked in that direction all the evening.
As Drayton saw her smile at his sallies, with bright eyes and heightened colour, leaning back in her cushioned chair, and looking under her long lashes into the empty palm of her pretty hand, he could not see that little portrait—painted on air with the colours of memory—that lay there like a locket;—neither his nor any other eyes, but hers alone.
Guy Strangways was at the farther end of the room, where were congregated Lady Blunket and her charming daughter, and that pretty Mrs. Maberly of whom we have spoken; and little Linnett, mounted straddlewise on his chair, leaning with his elbows on the back, and his chin on his knuckles, helped to entertain them with his inexhaustible agreeabilities. Guy Strangways had indeed very little cast upon him, for Linnett was garrulous and cheerful, and reinforced beside by help from other cheery spirits.
Here was Guy Strangways undergoing the isolation to which he had condemned himself; and over there, engrossed by Drayton, the lady whose peer he had never seen. Had she missed him? He saw no sign. Not once even casually had she looked in his direction; and how often, though she could not know it, had his eyes wandered toward her! Dull to him was the hour without her, and she was engrossed by another, who, selfish and shallow, was merely amusing himself and pleasing his vanity.
How is it that people in love see so well without eyes? Beatrix saw, without a glance, exactly where Guy Strangways was. She was piqued and proud, and chose perhaps to show him how little he was missed. It was his presence, though he suspected it so little, that sustained that animation which he resented; and had he left the room, Drayton would have found, all at once, that she was tired.
Next day was genial and warm, one of those days that bygone summer sometimes gives us back from the past to the wintry close of autumn, as in an old face that we love we sometimes see a look, transitory and how pathetic, of the youth we remember. Such days, howsoever pleasant, come touched with the melancholy of a souvenir. And perhaps the slanting amber light nowhere touched two figures more in harmony with its tone than those who now sat side by side on the rustic seat, under the two beech trees at the farther end of the pleasure-ground of Marlowe.
Old Lady Alice, with her cushions disposed about her, and her cloaks and shawls, had one arm of the seat; and the Bishop, gaitered and prudently buttoned up in a surtout of the finest black cloth, and with that grotesque (bequeathed of course by the Apostles) shovel-hat upon his silvery head, leaned back upon the other, and, with his dapper leg crossed, and showing the neat sole of his shoe to Lady Alice, stroked and patted, after his wont, the side of his calf.
"Upwards of three-and-thirty years," said the Bishop.
"Yes, about that—about three-and-thirty years; and what did you think of him? A very bad man, I'm sure."
"Madam, de mortuis. We have a saying, 'concerning the dead, nothing but good.'"
"Nothing but truth, say I," answered Lady Alice. "Praise can do them no good, and falsehood will do us a great deal of harm."
"You put the point strongly, Lady Alice; but when it is said, 'nothing but good,' we mean, of course, nothing but the good we may truly speak of them."
"And that, as you know, my lord, in his case was not much. You were with him to the moment of his death—nearly a week, was it not?"
"Three days precisely."
"Did he know from the first he was dying?" inquired Lady Alice.
"He was not aware that his situation was desperate until the end of the second day. Nor was it; but he knew he was in danger, and was very much agitated, poor man; very anxious to live and lead a better life."
"And you prayed with him?"
"Yes, yes; he was very much agitated, though; and it was not easy to fix his thoughts, poor Sir Harry! It was very sad. He held my hand in his—my hand—all the time I sat by the bed, saying, 'Don't you think I'll get over it?—I feel that I shall—I feel quite safe while I hold your hand.' I never felt a hand tremble as his did."
"You prayed for him, and read with him?" said Lady Alice. "And you acted, beside, as his confessor, did not you, and heard some revelation he had to make?"
"You forget, my dear Lady Alice, that the office of confessor is unknown to the Church. It is not according to our theory to extract a specific declaration of particular sins."
"H'm! I remember they told me that you refused at school to read the Absolution to the boys of your house until they had made confession and pointed out an offender they were concealing."
The Bishop hemmed and slightly coloured. It might have amused an indifferent auditor to see that eminent and ancient divine taken to task, and made even to look a little foolish, by this old woman, and pushed into a corner, as a wild young curate might be by him on a question of Church doctrine.
"Why, as to that, the fact may be so; but it was under very special circumstances, Lady Alice. The Church refuses even the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper to an intending communicant who is known to be living in wilful sin; and here was a wilful concealment of a grave offence, to which all had thus made themselves, and were continuing to make themselves, accessory. It is, I allow, a doubtful question, and I do not say I should be prepared to adopt that measure now. The great Martin Luther has spoken well and luminously on the fallacy of taking his convictions at any one period of his life as the measure of his doctrine at a later one. The grain of mustard-seed, the law of perpetual expansion and development, applies to faith as well as to motive and action, to the Christian as a spiritual individual as well as to the Church as an aggregate."
This apology for his faith did the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Queen's Copely urge in his citation before old Lady Alice Redcliffe, whom one would have thought he might have afforded to despise in a Christian way; but for wise purposes the instincts of self-defence and self-esteem, and a jealousy of even our smallest neighbour's opinion, is so deeply implanted, that we are ready to say a good word for ourselves to anyone who misconceives the perfect wisdom of our words, or the equally perfect purity of our motives.
END OF VOL. I.
PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER.