56
abide by whatever decision might be come to, utterly refused to be bound; quarrelled with his arbitrator; and broke off the negotiation. A year and a half afterwards, he requested Sir Frederick Thesiger to act as referee; whose opinion I give in his own words:—"The accommodation proposed by Norton is one in which you are to give way upon every subject, and he is not to recede upon one; and it seems to me to be ridiculous to talk of conciliation upon such a footing.'" …… "It is impossible not to be struck with the vacillating and vexatious course which Norton has pursued; exciting hopes only to disappoint them, and making promises apparently for the opportunity of breaking them." Friends mediated; men of business wasted their time in vain; Mr Norton's promises were ropes of sand.
In 1842—two years after Mr Norton had evaded the chance of exposure by declining to defend my petition under the Infant Custody Bill—he once more asked me to be "reconciled" to him, and to return and live with him. Though this was not arranged, yet from that time there was a degree of peace and friendliness established, which, for the sake of my sons (of whom I had already lost one), I was more than willing—I was anxious—to maintain. Mr Norton's letters again became caressing and flattering; he visited me at the house of my uncle Mr C. Sheridan, and after Mr Sheridan's death, at my own. When I wrote to him from abroad, in 1848, he sent one of my letters triumphantly to my mother, to prove to her what good terms we were on. He followed me to Germany, and said he did not think I ought to "travel alone." Down to the time of my mother's death, and the dispute respecting her annuity,—whatever under-current of bitterness and distrust there might be on my part, or of caprice on his—we remained on familiar and friendly terms; and he relapsed into the old habit of entreating my interference for his interests, with such of my family or friends as had political
