His Grace — page 241: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HI1S GRACE. 235 sition of her family, and the constant scandals to which his conduct gave rise. At the time when the forgery was committed, he was apparently upon terms of the most unrestricted intimacy with her, and then it was that he wrote the letter which she has now—very rightly and properly, as I think—handed over to me, after having kept the disgraceful secret for so many years. It contains, you will see, a full admission of his guilt. I am authorized by Lady Deverell to say that it is only with extreme reluctance, and under pres- sure of what she feels to be a paramount necessity, that she has at length betrayed him ; although he was not long in betraying her. Uponthe mercenary motives which led him to desert her in favor of a wealthy heiress it is needless for me to dwell; I have, I hope, said enough to convince you that respect for his memory will scarcely deter either Lady Deverell or me from making use of the weapon that we possess, should we be forced to do so. But I trust that we shall not beso forced. Now you can both of you read the letter, if you wish.” Hurstbourne snatched it up, and ran his eye over it hastily. I did not look at it myself, but he afterwards gave mea succinct report of what had been revealed to him through the medium of that faded ink and dis- colored paper. The missive, which was addressed to the writer’s “ dearest Julie,” was full of protestations of eternal love, of profound penitence, of determination to eschew evil and do good for the future—a melan- choly and ironical record of broken vows and ephemeral repentance, which ought never to have been perused by any human being, save the one to whom it had been so imprudently despatched all those years ago. Gomichboo cS (ECO) m