Chapter 17

Summary

As our reader may perhaps like to know the substance of Dunstan's conversation with his friend Everard, we subjoin a letter from the latter containing apparently the substance of what had been started the night before:

My dear Dunstan,

I enclose the loan you requested, tho’ I assure you I can but ill spare it. I am afraid I shall soon be like the feverish patients who are bled till they can bleed no more. But were it the last drop in my veins, you are still welcome to call upon me for it. As to the other points you touched upon, for which the scene of yesterday was much too public a place, I wish I could answer them as readily. I do not think Emmy, poor girl, is in love with young St Clair and I am quite certain he is not in love with her. At the same time, my dear fellow, I must confess I see no chance for you there, that you wrong me if you persist in thinking I serve you feebly or privately assassinate your character. On the contrary, I do not think I ever allowed you in her presence to possess a single demerit. Nor do I believe you possess one that time and a good wife would not cure, particularly as you say your Uncle George is in such bad health, as his death would take away half your temptations to evil. On the whole, I advise you not to part with Chlöe, as you are pleased to call Peggy Tell. You say you are certain Madame de Valcone is in love with me. I thank you for your very flattering opinion of my irresistible qualities, but I must doubt the fact and even if it were so, all-charming as she is, beautiful in her lonely sorrow as she rises now before me, do you think me at once so mad, so base, as to relinquish Alixe for the hopes of what? Of gaining the heart, in other words of ruining, a beautiful being who had confided in me, from whose husband I have received nothing but kindness. No, I confess at times I am bewildered, intoxicated. I confess it to you my friend, tho’ till you spoke I would hardly have owned it to my own soul, I would fly till I was freed from the strange infatuation.