"Then you _will_ try it, sir! That is all I ask. In any case, no harm can come of it." "My own opinion exactly"--with a dismal attempt at a chuckle. "Yes, I agree to try it. Only, the affair must be kept secret; outside this room nobody must know about it, unless it be my man, Andry Luce. And now, when can this son of yours be smuggled into the house?" "It's only a little past eleven o'clock, sir, and if you think you can spare me, I will go at once and bring him back with me. The servants are all abed, and my son could come and go without one of them being a whit the wiser." "That's a very good notion of yours, damme! Go at once, my dear woman; but first give me a drink of that cordial. I shall want nothing till you get back. And if I can coax that shy dog, Morpheus, to keep me company meanwhile, so much the better." CHAPTER X. THE SEQUEL OF MISS BAYNARD's ADVENTURE. It was with a bitter sense of helplessness that Miss Baynard continued to brood over the news brought her by Andry Luce. The knowledge that, with the exception of a certain legacy to herself and sundry small bequests to old servants, the whole of her uncle's wealth, both in land and money, would go to Mrs. Bullivant and her son, who were not even cousins six times removed, cut her to the quick. The amazing injustice of the thing, so to speak, struck her dumb. To think that a man who knew full well his span of life had dwindled to a few brief hours should, in cold blood, choose to perpetrate so black a sin--for in her eyes it was nothing less--was to Nell wholly inconceivable. And all for what? Merely because his son had married beneath him, and had thereby brought to naught a certain ambitious scheme on which his heart had been set. And now the innocent child was to suffer for its father's fault, if fault it were. Oh, it was monstrous--monstrous! Of one thing she was quite sure: she would never touch her uncle's legacy. Every shilling of it should go to the boy. But what was such a pittance in comparison with the income which, when he should come of age, ought to be his of inalienable right? Yet his name was not once mentioned in the will! The last of the Cortelyons--bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh--might die in a gutter or come to the gallows for anything the old man cared. Such a revenge was more than human; it was fiendish, and could only have been prompted by the devil. Nell burnt from head to foot with a fine flame of indignation when she thought of these things, and for the next forty-eight hours she could think of nothing else.