"The fault of too great confidence and credulity will readily and with justice be imputed against me, but that I have been guiltless of these connivances there can arise no difficulty in making appear. Grant, heaven! that such wickedness may flow back to the vile source whence it has sprung!" Such was the silent but emphatic soliloquy of the ill-fated De Brooke on leaving the Fort for W, where, at that interval, was the hero who had suppressed the rebellion, General Haughton, basking in the lustre of his fame.
In all the fulness of injured feeling, De Brooke called upon him, hoping he might throw some insight upon so nefarious a transaction, little conceiving he was addressing himself to him who was agent in his overthrow and ruin. He had even so far mistaken the feelings which influenced General Haughton, as to expect from him real sympathy, and fairly calculated on the benefit of his advice towards redressing his grievances.
The perfidious General, assuming ignorance of what, in his officiousness and pretended zeal for the public service, he had himself stirred up, readily assumed the mask of friendship, and adopted with ease towards the unsuspecting De Brooke the language of commiseration, in that hackneyed flow which the hypocrite has ever at
