ear out of the window;' at
the next, in half-quarrelsome mood, asking 'if it were any objection I
had to be connected with his family.' To get rid of a very troublesome
subject, and to end a controversy that threatened to disturb a party,
I said at last, 'We 'll talk it over to-morrow, Clifford, and if your
arguments be as good as your heart, then perhaps they may yet convince
me.' This ended the theme, and we parted. I started the next day on
a shooting excursion into Calabria, and when I got back it was not of
meeting Clifford I was thinking. I hastened to meet the Delia Torres,
and then came our elopement. You know the rest. We went to the East,
passed the winter in Upper Egypt, and came to Cairo in spring, where
Charley was born. I got back to Naples after a year or two, and then
found that my uncle had just died, and in consequence of my marrying the
daughter of his old and attached friend, Sir Guy Clifford, had reversed
the intention of his will, and by a codicil left me his sole heir. It
was thus that my marriage, and even my boy's birth, became inserted
in the Peerage; my solicitor, in his vast eagerness for my interests,
having taken care to indorse the story with his own name. The
disinherited nephews and nieces, the half-cousins and others, soon got
wind of the real facts, and contested the will, on the ground of its
being executed under a delusion. I, of course, would not resist their
claim, and satisfied myself by denying the statement as to my marriage;
and so, after affording the current subject of gossip for a season, I
was completely forgotten, the more as we went to live abroad, and never
mixed with English. And now, Upton, it is this same incident I would
utilize for the present occasion, though, as I said before, when it
originally occurred it had a very different signification."

"I don't exactly see how," said Upton.

"In this wise. My real marriage was never inserted in the Peerage.
I'll now manage that it shall so appear, to give me the opportunity of
formally contradicting it, and alluding to the strange persistence with
which, having married me some fifteen years ago to a lady who never
existed, they now are pleased to unite me to one whose character might
have secured me against the calumny. I 'll threaten an action for libel,
etc., obtain a most full, explicit, and abject apology, and then, when
this has gone the round of all the journals of Europe, her doom is
sealed!"

"But she has surel