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even to refund a trifling debt borrowed of the British Minister. What was there in all this? and yet this was the time when Lord Melbourne's brother placed that legacy to my account! truly I was not thinking then of proud and fastidious scruples: I was thinking where we should have to go next: to Madeira, or the Cape of Good Hope; to see my son die where my father had died. I had already lost my uncle, who was generous to me, and with whom, I had found a home after the trial: the literary tasks, on which so much stress was laid by Mr Norton's counsel, were utterly suspended: and I was simply glad—(let those sneer at it who please)—that with such a husband, and such a destiny of never-ending troubles, the family of the man in whose name I had suffered so much, were willing to prove, not for my sake but for his, that his kindness to me outlived him.
In the consciousness, then, of being made once more a subject of hateful annoyance to that family, to whom I would fain have been welcome; and especially of pain to Lord Melbourne's sister; who at the very time Mr Norton was bandying questions about her fulfilment of his privately expressed wishes,—and making her adherence to them a theme for public scandal,—was in deep mourning for the last of her three brothers.
And a more tender, affectionate, and devoted, sister and friend, I verily believe no brothers ever had.
In meeting the husband from whom I was separated, as a foe, in open Court; he himself a barrister, instructing counsel before my face, how best to attack me; I having no counsel, and never having stood in a Court of Justice before; in hearing my husband hooted and groaned at by the crowd, when the case was explained; in hearing his assertion respecting his breach of contract proved false, by evidence tendered on oath; in hearing the solicitor to my trustees tell him,—a magistrate, a peer's brother,—the father of my sons,—that it was expected the signed contract would have bound him " as a man of honour;" or, in other words, that he was_
