'Are my father and mother determined to ignore the fact that she is a lady by birth?' asked Lennard after a gloomy pause. 'Yes--they know, of course, that she is a lady,' stammered Mr. Kippilaw, feeling his mission an ungracious one, 'but poor--one who has sunk into obscurity and dependence--pardon me, I but use their own identical words. 'Well?' 'What is done in this instance unfortunately cannot be undone, Captain Melfort; but his lordship, feeling, of course, keenly in the matter, is willing to continue your allowance, and even to double it, on one condition. 'Name it.' Mr. Kippilaw sighed, for though, as a lawyer, considerably hardened, he felt the delicacy of the whole situation, and Lennard's dark eyes seemed to focus and pierce him. 'The condition--to the point!' 'Is--that you will return to India----' 'I mean to do so forthwith,' interrupted Lennard sharply. 'Or you may live anywhere out of Britain, but never attempt to intrude Mrs. Melfort upon your family or their circle, and contrive, if possible, to let that circle forget your existence.' 'Insolent--and cruel as insolent!' exclaimed Lennard Melfort as he started from his chair and paced about the room, with his dark eyes flashing and the veins in his forehead swollen like whip-cord. 'The words I speak are not my own,' said Mr. Kippilaw, deprecatingly. 'Return to Craigengowan, and tell my father that I reject his bribe to insult my wife--for a bribe it is--with the scorn it merits. Not a penny of his money will I accept while my sword and pay, or life itself, are left me. Tell Lord and Lady Fettercairn that I view myself as their son no more. As they discard me, so do I discard them; and even their _very name_ I shall not keep--remember that!' 'Dear me--dear me, all this is very sad!' 'They have thrust me from them as if I had been guilty of a crime----' 'Captain Melfort!' 'A crime I say--yet a day may come when they will repent it; and from this hour I swear----' 'Not in anger,' interrupted Mr. Kippilaw, entreatingly; 'take no hasty vow in your present temper.' 'I swear that to them and theirs I shall be--from this hour--as one in the grave!' 'But,' urged the lawyer, 'but suppose--which God forbid--that aught happened to your elder brother, Mr. Cosmo Melfort?' 'I wish Cosmo well; but I care not for my interest in the title--it may become dormant, extinct, for aught that I care. Neither I nor any of mine shall ever claim it, nor shall I again set foot in Craigengowan, or on the lands around it--no, never again, never again!' To every argument of the kind-hearted Mr. Kippilaw, who really loved the Fettercairn family and esteemed the high-spirited Lennard, the latter turned a deaf ear.