His Grace — page 265: what you’re looking at

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

HIS GRACE. 259 nowhere else for her to live. The poor fellow was very meek and submissive. Lady Deverell and Mr. Gas- coigne would hardly have recognized their brazen-faced assailant in the dejected young man who assured me that - nothing except his duty to his mother restrained him from putting an end to a useless and valueless existence. “You will be as valuable as ever in a few years, if only you will keep very quiet during that time,” I re- turned, “ and you may depend upon it that plenty of uses will be found for you before youdie. Meanwhile, it would be an exceedingly cowardly act on your part to hang yourself, leaving me to be summoned by your cousin and punished with the utmost rigor of the law.” But Mr. Gascoigne did not take out'a summons. We heard nothing of or from him on the following day, nor did any communication reach us from Lady Deverell. I took it that they were waiting for Hurstbourne to make the next move, “They'll have to waita long time then,” he remarked on my imparting this view to him; ‘‘I don’t know. what more there isfor me to say or do. I shouldn’t wonder if I were to meet the old woman to-night, though. I shall be curious to see whether she will cut me or de- nounce me publicly.”’ - He was, as usual, dining out, and was going on after- wards to I forget whose reception—a quasi-political gathering at which Lady Deverell was pretty sure to be present. I didnotthinkit at all probable that she would denounce him; but I was, I confess, not less curious than he as to the reception which her ladyship might see fit to accord him, and a good deal more so, perhaps as to the method by which Miss St. George might con- Gomichboo cS (E(@) m