‘It is not painful,’ answered Sivewright sharply; ‘no more painful than if you spoke to me of any scoundrel in the next street whose face I had never seen. Do you think that hearts are everlasting wear? There was a time when to think of my false, ungrateful guilty son was like the smart of a gun-shot wound. But that was years ago. All the tissues of my body have been changed since he deserted me. Do you suppose that regret and affection and shame, and the sense of kinship, do not wear out as well as flesh and blood? Twelve years ago Homer Sivewright lamented the only son who had disgraced him. I, the man who speaks to you to-day,’ touching his breast with his lean hand, ‘have no son.’ ‘A hard saying,’ replied Lucius compassionately, for there was more real feeling in this man’s assumed coldness than in many a loud-spoken and demonstrative grief; ‘yet I can but believe—unworthy as he may have seemed to you—he still holds a corner in your heart.’ A cloud came over the keen eyes, the gray head drooped, but Homer Sivewright made no admission of weakness. ‘Seemed unworthy,’ he repeated; ‘he _was_ unworthy.’ ‘You have never told me his crime.’ The old man lifted his head, and looked at the speaker with those penetrating eyes of his, for an instant resentfully, then with the cynicism which was his second nature. ‘What, are you curious?’ he said. ‘Well, I suppose you have a right to know something of the family you propose to honour with your alliance. Know, then, that the father of your intended wife was a liar and a thief.’ Lucius recoiled as if some outrageous insult had been offered to himself. ‘I cannot believe—’ he began. ‘Wait till you have heard the story before you attempt to dispute the facts. You know what my youth was—laborious, self-denying. I married early, but my marriage was a disappointment. I made the somewhat common error of taking a handsome face as a certificate of womanly excellence. My wife was a Spanish American, with a face like an old Italian picture. Unhappily, she had a temper which made her own life a burden, and produced a corresponding effect upon the lives of other people. She had an infinite capacity for discontent. She could he spasmodically gay under the influence of what is called pleasure, but happy never. Had I been monarch of the world, I doubt if I could have ever gratified half her wishes, or charmed the sullen demon in her breast. She rarely desired anything that was not unattainable. Judge, then, how she endured the only kind of existence I could offer her.