an instruments to execute it. Such instruments are
we. Can you--Oh, can you hesitate?"

Mr. Caryll clenched his hands hard. "Do it," he answered through set
teeth. "Do it! I shall approve it when 'tis done. But find other hands
for the work, Sir Richard. He is my father."

Sir Richard remained cool. "That is the argument I employ for insisting
upon the task being yours," he replied. Then, in a blaze of
passion, he--who had schooled his adoptive son so ably in
self-control--marshalled once more his arguments. "It is your duty to
your mother to forget that he is your father. Think of him only as the
man who wronged your mother; the man to whom her ruined life, her early
death are due--her murderer and worse. Consider that. Your father, you
say!" He mocked almost. "Your father! In what is he your father? You
have never seen him; he does not know that you exist, that you ever
existed. Is that to be a father? Father, you say! A word, a name--no
more than that; a name that gives rise to a sentiment, and a sentiment
is to stand between you and your clear duty; a sentiment is to set a
protecting shield over the man who killed your mother!

"I think I shall despise you, Justin, if you fail me in this. I have
lived for it," he ran on tempestuously. "I have reared you for it, and
you shall not fail me!"

Then his voice dropped again, and in quieter tones

"You hate the very name of John Caryll, Earl of Ostermore," said he, "as
must every decent man who knows the truth of what the life of that satyr
holds. If I have suffered you to bear his name, it is to the end that it
should remind you daily that you have no right to it, that you have no
right to any name."

When he said that he thrust his finger consciously into a raw wound. He
saw Justin wince, and with pitiless cunning he continued to prod that
tender place until he had aggravated the smart of it into a very agony.

"That is what you owe your father; that is the full extent of what lies
between you--that you are of those at whom the world is given to sneer
and point scorn's ready finger."

"None has ever dared," said Mr. Caryll.

"Because none has ever known. We have kept the secret well. You display
no coat of arms that no bar sinister may be displayed. But the time
may come when the secret must out. You might, for instance, think of
marrying a lady of quality, a lady of your own supposed station. What
shall you tell her of yourself? That you have no name to offer