command—flippant on the lip, but foreign from the heart! He was a man of whom it might be justly said,
"A smile eternal on his lip he wears,
That equally the vile and virtuous shares."
Open and candid himself, De Brooke was far from suspecting deceit in others: and far was he from then diving into the real feelings of him who promised to befriend him, extenuate his conduct to Government, soften its aspersions, and bring if possible the really culpable forward to justice.
Thus ended an appeal, vainly and fruitlessly addressed to the heart of one by nature selfish, and swelled by the triumphs attending upon recent victory. General Haughton was not the being whom the private sorrows of an individual could affect with gratuitous feeling, least of all those of an officer upon whose ruin he hoped to build his own advancement, and rise another enviable step in his military career. "Truth," reasoned De Brooke, in returning from the conference he had held, "truth must find its advocate; the purity of my intentions, the disinterested zeal with which I have been ever actuated, must speak for itself."
With ample means before him, how many in his situation might have availed themselves of its ad-
