Who and what was Sir Richard Wallace? That is a question which excited great interest forty-five years ago, an interest which has not altogether died out even now. That he was the private secretary and _âme damnée_ of Lord Hertford everybody knew. How he came to occupy that position, and what led his patron to alienate from his family in Sir Richard’s favour so much of his great fortune as was in his power, together with the whole of the art treasures which he and his father and grandfather had collected during three-quarters of a century, at a time when beautiful things were to be had for what would now be considered an old song—that was a mystery to which no one had a clue, and which only now can be solved with absolute accuracy. Much that has been suggested is undoubtedly false, based upon conjecture without any knowledge of such facts as have been brought to light. [Illustration: RICHARD, MARQUIS OF HERTFORD, K.G. _From a bust in the Wallace Collection._ [_To face p. 158._] Having been a trustee of the so-called Wallace Collections since the death of Lady Wallace in 1897, and having lived in great intimacy with Sir John Scott, who was her heir and had been so long the fidus Achates of Sir Richard, I have come to the conclusion that such evidence as exists and was known to Sir John, to Lord Esher and others, entirely disposes of the scandalous story that he was the illegitimate son of Lady Hertford, and therefore half-brother to Lord Hertford. The true story, vouched for by people who were intimately acquainted with the scandals of the first half of the last century, is that Richard Lord Hertford, when a mere boy, had an intrigue with a Scotch girl of low birth—Agnes Wallace, afterwards Jackson. The result was Sir Richard Wallace. As the girl was older than himself, Lord Yarmouth, as he then was, had been rather the seduced than the seducer, and soon tired of the whole connection. He was quite willing to pay, but he had no mind to start in life saddled with the dead weight of an uneducated mistress and a natural son. Lady Hertford, however, got wind of the affair through Colonel Gurwood, a brother officer and intimate friend of Lord Yarmouth. She took a fancy to the child, who responded with an affection that was almost filial. Lord Hertford, to whom his mother’s slightest wish was law, took up the boy at her bidding, and educated him until he grew up and became entirely indispensable. The lad was well known in Paris as “Monsieur Richard,” Lord Hertford’s shadow and agent, his representative at auctions and sales of works of art.