duke, in a low voice.

"First and last, in Italy and France, I have examined the registers of
your marriage with my mother, and of my own birth and baptism; and in
England, Burke's Peerage. All these as well as other well-known facts,
As easily proved as if they were recorded, establish my rights as your
son--your eldest son and _heir_."

"As my son, but not as my heir, for your most unhappy mother--"

"STOP!!" suddenly exclaimed the young man, while his blue eyes
blazed with a dangerous fire. "I warn you, Duke of Hereward, that you
must not breathe one word reflecting in the least degree on my dear,
injured mother's name. You have wronged her enough, Heaven knows! and I,
her son, tell you so. Yes! from the beginning to end, you have wronged
her grievously, unpardonably. First of all, in marrying her at all, when
you must have seen--you could not have failed to see--that she, gentle
and helpless creature that she was, was _forced_ by her parents to
give you her hand, when her broken heart was not hers to give! And,
secondly, when she discovered that the lover (to whom she had been
sacredly married by the church, though it seems not lawfully married
by the state,) and whom she had supposed to be dead, was really living;
and when she took the only course a pure and sensitive woman could take,
and withdrew herself from you both, _writing to you her reasons for
doing so_, and expressing her wish to live apart a quiet, single,
blameless life, you did not wait, you did not investigate, but, with
indecent haste, you so hurried through with your divorce, and hurried
into your second marriage, as to brand my mother with undeserved infamy,
and delegalized her son and yours before his birth."

"Heaven help me," moaned the Duke of Hereward, covering his face with his
hands.

"You have done us both this infinite wrong, and you cannot undo it now.
I know that you cannot, for I have taken the pains to seek legal advice,
and I have been assured that you cannot rectify this wrong. But--use my
injured mother's sacred name with reverence, Duke of Hereward, I warn
you!--"

"Heaven knows I would use it in no other way! I loved your mother. She
and you were not the only sufferers in my domestic tragedy. Her loss
nearly killed me with grief even when I thought her unworthy. The
discovery of the great wrong I did her has nearly crazed me with
remorse since that."

"Then do not grudge her son the small share you allow him of that vast