said the elder Ardworth, with a choking voice, "I ought to wear
sackcloth all my life for having given you such a mother. When I think
what I have suffered from the habit of carelessness in those confounded
money-matters ('irritamenta malorum,' indeed!), I have only one
consolation,--that my patient, noble son is free from my vice. You would
not believe what a well-principled, honourable fellow I was at your age;
and yet, how truly I said to my poor friend William Mainwaring one
day at Laughton (I remember it now) 'Trust me with anything else but
half-a-guinea!' Why, sir, it was that fault that threw me into low
company,--that brought me in contact with my innkeeper's daughter at
Limerick. I fell in love, and I married (for, with all my faults, I was
never a seducer, John). I did not own my marriage; why should I?--my
relatives had cut me already. You were born, and, hunted poor devil as
I was, I forgot all by your cradle. Then, in the midst of my troubles,
that ungrateful woman deserted me; then I was led to believe that it was
not my own son whom I had kissed and blessed. Ah, but for that thought
should I have left you as I did? And even in infancy, you had the
features only of your mother. Then, when the death of the adulteress
set me free, and years afterwards, in India, I married again and had
new ties, my heart grew still harder to you. I excused myself by knowing
that at least you were cared for, and trained to good by a better
guide than I. But when, by so strange a hazard, the very priest who
had confessed your mother on her deathbed (she was a Catholic) came
to India, and (for he had known me at Limerick) recognized my altered
person, and obeying his penitent's last injunctions, assured me that you
were my son,--oh, John, then, believe me, I hastened back to England
on the wings of remorse! Love you, boy! I have left at Madras three
children, young and fair, by a woman now in heaven, who never wronged
me, and, by my soul, John Ardworth, you are dearer to me than all!"

The father's head drooped on his son's breast as he spoke; then, dashing
away his tears, he resumed,--

"Ah, why would not Braddell permit me, as I proposed, to find for his
son the same guardianship as that to which I intrusted my own? But his
bigotry besotted him; a clergyman of the High Church,--that was worse
than an atheist. I had no choice left to me but the roof of that
she-hypocrite. Yet I ought to have come to England when I heard of