te patron has endured without help or
countenance. Your own best word, my lord, was only gratitude. O, but he
was your son too! He had no other father. He was hated in the country,
God knows how unjustly. He had a loveless marriage. He stood on all
hands without affection or support--dear, generous, ill-fated, noble
heart!"

"Your tears do you much honour and me much shame," says my lord, with a
palsied trembling. "But you do me some injustice. Henry has been ever
dear to me, very dear. James (I do not deny it, Mr. Mackellar), James is
perhaps dearer; you have not seen my James in quite a favourable light;
he has suffered under his misfortunes; and we can only remember how
great and how unmerited these were. And even now his is the more
affectionate nature. But I will not speak of him. All that you say of
Henry is most true; I do not wonder, I know him to be very magnanimous;
you will say I trade upon the knowledge? It is possible; there are
dangerous virtues: virtues that tempt the encroacher. Mr. Mackellar, I
will make it up to him; I will take order with all this. I have been
weak; and, what is worse, I have been dull."

"I must not hear you blame yourself, my lord, with that which I have yet
to tell upon my conscience," I replied. "You have not been weak; you
have been abused by a devilish dissembler. You saw yourself how he had
deceived you in the matter of his danger; he has deceived you throughout
in every step of his career. I wish to pluck him from your heart; I wish
to force your eyes upon your other son; ah, you have a son there!"

"No, no," said he, "two sons--I have two sons."

I made some gesture of despair that struck him; he looked at me with a
changed face. "There is much worse behind?" he asked, his voice dying as
it rose upon the question.

"Much worse," I answered. "This night he said these words to Mr. Henry:
'I have never known a woman who did not prefer me to you, and I think
who did not continue to prefer me.'"

"I will hear nothing against my daughter," he cried; and from his
readiness to stop me in this direction, I conclude his eyes were not so
dull as I had fancied, and he had looked not without anxiety upon the
siege of Mrs. Henry.

"I think not of blaming her," cried I. "It is not that. These words were
said in my hearing to Mr. Henry; and if you find them not yet plain
enough, these others but a little after: 'Your wife, who is in love with
me.'"

"They have quarrelled?" he said.