Ten minutes past ten dear blessed Sir William left me." The grouping of figures and emotions at that death-bed was odd almost beyond comprehension; one of the most singular studies which human nature has presented to itself of its powers of self-cajolement.

A man systematically deceived, yet apparently sincerely regarded, and affectionately tended to the last by his betrayers, one of whom at least prided himself, and for the most part not unjustly, upon his fidelity to his friends.

Hamilton, alone among the three, seems to have been single-minded--to have viewed their mutual relations to the end, not with cynical indifference, but with a simplicity of confidence hard to be understood in a man of his antecedents.

It may have been, however, that he recognized the inevitable in the disparity of years and in his wife's early training, and that he chose to cover her failings with a self-abnegation that was not without nobility.

Upon such a tacit affirmation he set a final seal in a codicil to his will, well calculated to silence those who saw scandal in the association between his wife and his friend.