THE HAPPY HYPOCRITE
marriage, written to his lawyer, declaring solemnly that he, Lord George Hell, had forsworn the world, that he was where no man would find him, that he desired all his worldly goods to be distributed, thus and thus, among these and those of his companions? By this testament he had verily atoned for the wrong he had done, had made himself dead indeed to the world.
No address had he written upon this document. Though its injunctions were final and binding, it could betray no clue of his hiding-place. For the rest, no one would care to seek him out. He, who had done no good to human creature, would pass unmourned out of memory. The clubs, doubtless, would laugh and puzzle over his strange recantations, envious of whomever he had enriched, They would say ’twas a good riddance of a rogue and soon forget him.[1] But she, whose prime
- ↑ I would refer my little readers once mote to the pages of Contemporary Bucks, where Captain Tarleton speculates upon the sudden disappearance of Lord George Hell and describes its effect on the town. “Not even the shrewdest,” says he, “even gave a guess that would throw a ray of revealing light on the disparition of this profligate man. It was supposed that he carried off with him a little dancer from Garble’s, at which haunt of pleasantry he was certainly on the night he vanished, and whither the young lady never returned again. Garble declared he had been compensated for her perfidy, but that he was sure the had not succumbed to his lordship, having in fact rejected him soundly. Did his lordship, say the cronies, take his life—and hers! Il n’y a pas d’epreuve.
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