speeches attributed to Clive, the Colonel, and the rest, are as authentic as the
orations in Sallust or Livy, and only implore the truth-loving public to believe
that incidents here told, and which passed very probably without witnesses, were
either confided to me subsequently as compiler of this biography, or are of such
a nature that they must have happened from what we know happened after. For
example, when you read such words as QVE ROMANVS on a battered Roman stone, your
profound antiquarian knowledge enables you to assert that SENATVS POPVLVS was
also inscribed there at some time or other. You take a mutilated statue of Mars,
Bacchus, Apollo, or Virorum, and you pop on him a wanting hand, an absent foot,
or a nose, which time or barbarians have defaced. You tell your tales as you
can, and state the facts as you think they must have been. In this manner, Mr.
James (historiographer to Her Majesty), Titus Livius, Professor Alison, Robinson
Crusoe, and all historians proceeded. Blunders there must be in the best of
these narratives, and more asserted than they can possibly know or vouch for.
    To recur to our own affairs, and the subject at present in hand. I am
obliged here to supply from conjecture a few points of the history which I could
not know from actual experience or hearsay. Clive, let us say, is Romanus, and
we must add Senatus Populusque to his inscription. After Mrs. Mackenzie and her
pretty daughter had been for a few months in London, which they did not think of
quitting, although Mr. Binnie's wounded little leg was now as well and as brisk
as ever it had been, a redintegration of love began to take place between the
Colonel and his relatives in Park Lane. How should we know that there had ever
been a quarrel, or at any rate a coolness? Thomas Newcome was not a man to talk
at length of any such matter, though a word or two occasionally dropped in
conversation by the simple gentleman might lead persons who chose to interest
themselves about his family affairs to form their own opinions concerning them.
After that visit of the Colonel and his son to Newcome, Ethel was constantly
away with her grandmother. The Colonel went to see his pretty little favourite
at Brighton, and once, twice, thrice Lady Kew's door was denied to him. The
knocker of that door could not be more fierce than the old lady's countenance
when Newcome met her in her chariot driving on the cliff. Once, forming the
loveliest of a charming