"Indeed!" said Lord Frederick, raising his eyebrows, and carefully taking the shell off his egg. "I don't care about reading old letters myself, especially the private correspondence of other people; but tastes differ. You do, it seems. I had imagined the particular letters you allude to had been burnt." "My mother intended to burn them." "It would certainly have been wiser to do so, but probably for that reason they remained undestroyed. From time immemorial womankind has shown a marked repugnance to the dictates of common sense." "I have burnt them." "Just so," said Lord Frederick, helping himself to salt. "I commend your prudence. Had you burnt them unread, I should have been able to commend your sense of honour also." "What do you know about honour?" said John. The two men looked hard at each other. "That remark," said Lord Frederick, joining the ends of his fingers and half shutting his eyes, "is a direct insult. To insult a man with whom you are not in a position to quarrel is, in my opinion, John, an error of judgment. We will consider it one, and as such I will let it pass. The letters, I presume, contained nothing of which you were not already aware?" "Only the fact that I am your illegitimate son." "I deplore your coarseness of expression. You certainly have not inherited it from me. But, my dear Galahad, it is impossible that even your youth and innocence should not have known of my _tendresse_ for your mother." "Is that the last new name for adultery?" said John huskily, advancing a step nearer the bed. His face was livid. His eyes burned. He held his hands clenched lest they should rush out and wrench away all semblance of life and humanity from that figure in the watered-silk dressing-gown. Lord Frederick lay back on his pillows, and looked at him steadily. He was without fear, but it appeared to him that he was about to die. The laws of his country, of conscience and of principle, all the protection that envelops life, seemed to have receded from him, to have slipped away into the next room, or downstairs with the valet. They would come back, no doubt, in time, but they might be a little late, as far as he was concerned. "He has strong hands, like mine," he said to himself, his pale, unflinching eyes fixed upon his son's; while a remembrance slid through his mind of how once, years ago, he had choked the life out of a mastiff which had turned on him, and how long the heavy brute had taken to die. "Do not spill the coffee," he said quietly, after a moment. John started violently, and wheeled away from him like a man regaining consciousness on the brink of an abyss. Lord Frederick put out his lean hand, and went on with his breakfast. There was a long silence.