His Grace — page 277: what you’re looking at

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

HIS GRACE. 271 a sufficient number of them in due course; though Hurstbourne, I believe, escaped such annoyances. Perhaps his friends were content to pity him; perhaps they may have had a not altogether mistaken impres- sion that he was an awkward customer to quarrel with. What I can answer for is that Lady Deverell didn’t quarrel with him: on the contrary, she sent Nora a very kind letter of congratulation and a pair of silver-backed brushes, as a wedding-present. Paul Gascoigne did not rise to quite that height of magnanimity ; but when I ran against him, one day, in the street, he stopped me to explain at some length that he did not propose to take any further steps in the matter that I knew of. “TI think,” he observed, “ I made it clear to you and to my cousin—at all events I intended to do. so—that action on my side was simply and solely contingent upon action on his; I have no desire to punish him, now that he has recognized in so practical a manner the propriety of yielding to my demands. What need there was for the outrageous attack which he chose to make upon me I am at a loss to understand; the part which you took in the affair, Mr. Martyn, is perhaps more readily comprehensible.” That was one of the above-mentioned pin-pricks to which I had tosubmit; I can’t say that it inflicted very severe suffering upon me. The same weekly journal which informed its readers of arumor that “the young- est of our unmarried dukes, having failed to astonish the world by a brief and far from brilliant turf career, is about to achieve the notoriety that he covets by con- — tracting a matrimonial alliance with a young woman of obscure origin,” contained a more respectful paragraph to the effect that a marriage had been arranged and com (@) boo “S (ale)