ation
of a great estate, when once you have declared your boy illegitimate."

"He is a beggar: I know it; the penalty he must pay is a heavy one. But
think of _her_, Upton,--think of the haughty Viscountess, revelling in
splendor, and, even in all her shame, the flattered, welcomed guest of
that rotten, corrupt society she lives in. Imagine her in all the pride
of wealth and beauty, sought after, adulated, worshipped as she is,
suddenly struck down by the brand of this disgrace, and left upon the
world without fortune, without rank, without even a name. To be shunned
like a leper by the very meanest of those it had once been an honor when
she recognized them. Picture to yourself this woman, degraded to the
position of all that is most vile and contemptible. She, that scarcely
condescended to acknowledge as her equals the best-born and the highest,
sunk down to the hopeless infamy of a mistress. They tell me she
laughed on the day I fainted at seeing her entering the San Carlos at
Naples,--laughed as they carried me down the steps into the fresh air!
Will she laugh now, think you? Shall I be called 'Le Pauvre Sire'
when she hears this? Was there ever a vengeance more terrible, more
complete?"

"Again, I say, Glencore, you have no right to involve others in the
penalty of her fault. Laying aside every higher motive, you can have no
more right to deny your boy's claim to his rank and fortune than I or
any one else. It cannot be alienated nor extinguished; by his birth he
became the heir to your title and estates."

"He has no birth, sir, he is a bastard: who shall deny it? _You_ may,"
added he, after a second's pause; "but where's your proof? Is not every
probability as much against you as all documentary evidence, since none
will ever believe that I could rob myself of the succession, and make
over my fortune to Heaven knows what remote relation?"

"And do you expect me to become a party to this crime?" asked Upton,
gravely.

"You balked me in one attempt at vengeance, and I think you owe me a
reparation!"

"Glencore," said Upton, solemnly, "we are both of us men of the
world,--men who have seen life in all its varied aspects sufficiently to
know the hollowness of more than half the pretension men trade upon as
principle; we have witnessed mean actions and the very lowest motives
amongst the highest in station; and it is not for either of us to affect
any overstrained estimate of men's honor and good faith; but I s