gerously ill. His chief nurse was a married lady, young, charming, accomplished, whose husband, Baron Imhoff, a poor German nobleman, was going out to seek his fortune at Madras. Between Hastings and Mrs. Imhoff the growing intimacy deepened into love. Imhoff's needs, or perhaps his good-nature, inclined him to make the best of an awkward complication. How far his wife's passion had then led her, may perhaps be a matter of opinion. By an arrangement made between the parties themselves, Mr. and Mrs. Imhoff were to live on together as man and wife, pending the issue of a divorce-suit which the lady was to carry on with Hastings' money and the Baron's consent in the Franconian courts. Gleig assures us that Mr. and Mrs. Imhoff 'lived together with good repute,' first in Madras and afterwards in Calcutta. And Macaulay, for once agreeing with the reverend chaplain, assumes that Hasting's love, like all his passions, was not less strong and deep than 'patient of delay.' Certain it is at least, that self-control and a tender chivalry towards women were equally prominent traits in Hastings' character.
