His Grace — page 234: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

228 HIS GRACE. “The fellow, I presume,’ said I, as I took the document handed to me, “is Mr. Gascoigne.” Hurstbourne nodded. He looked very savage and very cool. He is one of those favored mortals who grow cool when they arereally angry. ‘“ I won’t express my Opinion or my intentions yet,” he remarked. “ Read his letter and judge for yourself what you would do in my place.” The letter, which bore signs of being a painstaking composition, ran as follows: “* My DEAR COUSIN :— “Tt would, I fear, be an almost hopeless task to con- vince you that, in adopting the course which | feel constrained to adopt, I am actuated by no sentiments of personal unfriendliness towards you. You have persistently, though erroneously, credited me with such sentiments, and I am not sanguine enough to expect that this communication will be attributed by you to any other motive. Nevertheless, you will probably . understand that I should not, if I could see my way to avoid it, act in such a manner as to cast a slur upon the family to which we both belong. Having premised that much, I will state my case in as few words as possible. “You have not, I am sure, forgotten a conversation which took place between us at Lavenham upon the subject of the late Lord Charles Gascoigne. Like the rest of the world, you must have surmised that my uncle would not for so many years have refused to recognize his brother without good and sufficient reasons, and that those reasons, if divulged, would in all likelihood prove less creditable to Lord Charles ¢om T = \ (E(@) m 3) EDOOKS