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lived with their mother, and it was one of my many astonishments on Thursday to hear her unblushingly state that all I had done for them was to pay for their education.
The history of the action against Lord Melbourne was shortly this:—I had observed from the time of their close intimacy, Mrs Norton had taken less interest in our then only child and in myself. On one occasion, I had seen her arm round his neck, and when I remonstrated with her, she said, "Well, and what if I had my Melly round the neck—what was it?" I was jealous, and mentioned the subject to Mrs Sheridan, who quite lulled my suspicion by telling me that he had been her fathers friend, and other circumstances; and on the morning of the 30th of March, 1835, I had no suspicion whatever that their intimacy was anything more than Platonic. On that morning Mrs Norton left her home, leaving her letter-bureau, by accident, open, and I saw piles of Lord Melbourne's letters lying in it. She never showed me his letters, saying letters were not meant for two; and, knowing her particularity about her letters, without looking at one, I locked the door of the room in which they were, and giving my servant. Fitness, the key, gave him: the most positive orders that no one should enter the room until Mrs Norton returned, in order that she might see that they were untouched, and just as she had left them. I then took my children to the country, but the next day was surprised to receive a letter from Fitness, to say that Mr Charles Sheridan, Mrs Norton's brother, had come at six o'clock in the morning, and asked for some papers out of the bureau for a publication Mrs Norton was then engaged on, and that he had permitted him to take them.
I came to town immediately, and found that the bureau had been emptied of its contents, I then for the first time suspected something wrong. I searched about, and found a small writingdesk in the room which had escaped observation. I opened it, and found the two or three letters of Lord Melbourne which were produced at the trial, and one or two letters and papers of a more suspicious character written by a gentleman at Eastbourne.
