“I think you have done pretty well in your life, Reginald. What you have wanted you have got. That does not happen to all of us. Except health, which is a great deduction, of course.” “What I have wanted! I wanted an heir and a family like other men, and I got a poor little wife who died at nineteen, and a useless slip of a girl. Then my second venture--perhaps you think my second venture was very successful--a fine robust wife, and a mischievous brat like Rex, always in scrapes at school, besides that little spiteful minx Sophy, who would spite her own mother if she could, and the two imps in the nursery. What good are they to me? The boy will succeed me, of course, and keep you out. I had quite as lief you had it, John. You are my own brother, after all, and that boy is more his mother’s than mine. He has those eyes of hers. Lord! what a fool a young fellow is! To imagine I should have given up so much when I ought to have known better, and taken so many burdens on my shoulders for the sake of a pair of fine eyes. They are fine eyes still, but I know the meaning of them now.” “This is simply brutal, Reginald,” said his brother, in high indignation. He got up to go away, but a sign from Mrs. Trevanion, behind her husband’s back, made him pause. “Brutal, is it? which means true. Give me some of that eau-de-Cologne. Can’t you be quick about it? You take half an hour to cross the room. I’ve always meant to tell you about that second marriage of mine. I was a fool, and she was-- Shall I tell him all about it, Madam? when we met, and how you led me on. By Jove! I have a great mind to publish the whole business, and let everybody know who you are and what you are--or, rather, were when I married you.” “I wish you would do so, Reginald. The mystery has never been my doing. It would be for my happiness if you would tell John.” The sick man looked round upon her with a chuckling malice. “She would like to expose herself in order to punish me,” he said. “But I sha’n’t do it; you may dismiss that from your mind. I don’t wish the country to know that my wife was--” Then he ended with a laugh which was so insulting that John Trevanion involuntarily clinched his fist and made a step forward; then recollected himself, and fell back with a suppressed exclamation.