“Mistake is not the word for it. A more detestable, outrageous, caddish act, I could not conceive. Good gracious! I would like to kick you round my table, kick you down the hall, kick you out at my door, down the steps, send you flying along the avenue from tree to tree, and a kick at each. Do you not see, you scoundrel, what you have done?—cast an indelible slur upon the girl’s character. Mistake—mistake, indeed! Of all snobbery! Mistake! Get out of my house this instant. You pollute the atmosphere, you. You a son of my lord! You, who have not a drop of honourable blood in your veins, not a spark of proper feeling in your heart, not the smallest grain of gentlemanly, let alone noble sentiment in your whole nature—you contemptible bastard of Sam Ceely.” CHAPTER XXXIV. LESS THAN NOBODY. Giles Inglett Saltren was so completely thrown off his balance by Welsh’s repudiations of the story of his parentage, that he did not resent, he hardly heard the burst of indignation that escaped his uncle; or, if he heard it, his mind was too preoccupied to follow his words, and measure their force, and take umbrage at their grossness. He was overpowered with dismay. What had he done? He could not even realise the extent of the evil he had wrought, nor measure the depth of his own baseness. But Mr. Welsh was not a man to leave him without having spread out the mass of his misdeeds before him, and held his head down over it, and indicated its most salient features. “You abominable little snob!” he exclaimed. “Have you forgotten what has been done for you? If his lordship had not taken you from the hard form on which you polished the seat of your corduroys, and set you in an easy chair, you’d have nice callosities now. Probably you would not have been alive at all had he not sent you to the South of France.” Mr. Welsh became sarcastic. “No doubt you owe his lordship a grudge because he didn’t let you go at once to kingdom come instead of detaining you here in this Vale of Tears. Mind you, Giles—there is no escape from this fact, that you owe your life to him. To him also you owe your education. To him you owe it that, supposing you had lived, you are not now a horny-handed ploughboy, that you know how to use a pocket-handkerchief, and don’t put your knife in your mouth.” Mr. Welsh thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood with legs apart looking scornfully at his nephew.