bearer of it."

The Earl had been uneasy for some time during the evening, as he glanced
at Mr. Havisham, and when he was uneasy he was always ill-tempered.

"Why do you look so at the boy!" he exclaimed irritably. "You have been
looking at him all the evening as if--See here now, why should you look
at the boy, Havisham, and hang over him like some bird of ill-omen! What
has your news to do with Lord Fauntleroy?"

"My lord," said Mr. Havisham, "I will waste no words. My news has
everything to do with Lord Fauntleroy. And if we are to believe it--it
is not Lord Fauntleroy who lies sleeping before us, but only the son of
Captain Errol. And the present Lord Fauntleroy is the son of your son
Bevis, and is at this moment in a lodging-house in London."

The Earl clutched the arms of his chair with both his hands until the
veins stood out upon them; the veins stood out on his forehead too; his
fierce old face was almost livid.

"What do you mean!" he cried out. "You are mad! Whose lie is this?"

"If it is a lie," answered Mr. Havisham, "it is painfully like the
truth. A woman came to my chambers this morning. She said your son
Bevis married her six years ago in London. She showed me her marriage
certificate. They quarrelled a year after the marriage, and he paid her
to keep away from him. She has a son five years old. She is an American
of the lower classes,--an ignorant person,--and until lately she did not
fully understand what her son could claim. She consulted a lawyer and
found out that the boy was really Lord Fauntleroy and the heir to the
earldom of Dorincourt; and she, of course, insists on his claims being
acknowledged."

There was a movement of the curly head on the yellow satin cushion. A
soft, long, sleepy sigh came from the parted lips, and the little boy
stirred in his sleep, but not at all restlessly or uneasily. Not at all
as if his slumber were disturbed by the fact that he was being proved
a small impostor and that he was not Lord Fauntleroy at all and never
would be the Earl of Dorincourt. He only turned his rosy face more on
its side, as if to enable the old man who stared at it so solemnly to
see it better.

The handsome, grim old face was ghastly. A bitter smile fixed itself
upon it.

"I should refuse to believe a word of it," he said, "if it were not such
a low, scoundrelly piece of business that it becomes quite possible in
connection with the name of my son Bevis. It is quite like Bevis. He