149 
hopes of success but for this intervention. Yet there is not one 
tittle of evidence shown for such an assertion. Then in the 
course of elaboration the story descends to “He is said.” He 
“is said’? to have added the menace of ruining her character if 
she refused him.* So we have the usual scandal corner with 
“They say,” “They do say,’ “It is whispered,” “It is said,” 
and so on. Yet this gossip is printed and reprinted and so 
_ reasserted for acceptance as fact without further consideration 
or thought. 
But all this time neither of the biographies has given a thought 
to Mr. Linley. What must have been the father’s state when he 
learned of this affair? Struck dumb with anguish, as he must 
have been at the thought that his universally beloved child, his 
_ own ambition, was gone, and gone, too, for what, who could say. 
- Doubt, grief, and horror must have been his, and it may well be 
imagined and hoped that others must have been as sadly pained 
and shocked as was Mathews. Gone with this extravagant and 
useless youth, who had worked this against the declared wishes of 
_ both fathers, as utterly regardless of consequences as the worst of 
~ men could have been, a pretended adviser and protector, who had 
taken this young girl from her home in the midst of panegyric and 
applause, in the heighth of her prosperity and renown, broken and 
half ruined her father by thus depriving him of his daughter and 
of the ready resources her skill brought him, and taken her foreign 
t e knew not whither. Mathews, Mr. Linley’s intimate friend, against 
whom so far he knew no ill and had no ill-feeling, came with 
_his sympathy and rage, and the reiterated question between them 
"must have been—where are they? It was to get an answer to 
‘this question that Mathews busied himself, and yet even for this 
; blame is thrown upon him. Soon the prejudicial report or charge 
against Mathews left behind or circulated by young Sheridan 
ached Mr. Linley and he, accepting it, thereupon refused to 
* Moore 48. 
