Lord Etherington's first impulse had led him to poke the fire; and he held in his hand the letter which he was more than half tempted to commit, without even breaking the seal, to the fiery element.
But, though sufficiently familiarized with guilt, he was not as yet acquainted with it in its basest shapes--he had not yet acted with meanness, or at least with what the world terms such.

He had been a duellist, the manners of the age authorized it--a libertine, the world excused it to his youth and condition--a bold and successful gambler, for that quality he was admired and envied; and a thousand other inaccuracies, to which these practices and habits lead, were easily slurred over in a man of quality, with fortune and spirit to support his rank.

But his present meditated act was of a different kind.

Tell it not in Bond Street, whisper it not on St.James's pavement!--it amounted to an act of petty larceny, for which the code of honour would admit of no composition.
Lord Etherington, under the influence of these recollections, stood for a few minutes suspended--But the devil always finds logic to convince his followers.

He recollected the wrong done to his mother, and to himself, her offspring, to whom his father had, in the face of the whole world, imparted the hereditary rights, of which he was now, by a posthumous deed, endeavouring to deprive the memory of the one and the expectations of the other.