"MADAME,--My noble master commands me to inform you that he can recognise no further claim upon him, and that he can respond to no appeal from you or your husband, either in the present or in the future. "He requests that he may be troubled by no further communications from you, FÉTIS." "Devil!" exclaimed Lavendale, when he had heard the last of the letters, "nay, Satan himself, as I have read of him, has an amiable air as compared with this fish-blooded profligate--this worn-out _roué_, whose heart must be of the consistence of a sliced cucumber. I have no doubt that Irene's mother was Topsparkle's daughter, the infant whom he sent to Buckinghamshire to be nursed, and doubtless carried off to the Continent with the rest of his goods and chattels when he left the country. And to think that he had not even one touch of tenderness for the child of the woman he murdered! There was no compunction--no remorse--not one sting of conscience to urge him to generosity. He could have seen the daughter starve with as unrelenting eyes as he saw the mother die." "He is indeed a heartless dastard," said Herrick, "and I have no desire that my wife should profit by her kindred with him." "O, but she shall profit, or at any rate he shall wince," cried Lavendale; "let me be your emissary, Herrick. 'Twill be easier for me to give him his jobation. I will make those old veins of his tingle; I will conjure up the vermilion of shame under that vizard of white lead. I will let him know what an English gentleman thinks of such conduct as his. God's death, but he shall feel again, as he felt forty years ago on the hustings at Brentford, when the mob rated him. If Hamlet spoke daggers to his mother, I will speak rotten eggs and dead puppy-dogs to this Topsparkle. And he is _her_ husband. _Her_ husband! O, shame! O, agony! Herrick, I was an ass, a poltroon, not to run away with her!" That was an old argument which Durnford did not care to reopen. He gave Lavendale the letters, urged him to be temperate in his interview with Topsparkle. But little good could come of raking up the unholy past. There was no evidence strong enough to bring the millionaire's crimes home to him in any court of justice. Fétis might blab his own and his master's guilt in a moment of excitement and terror, but face to face with the law, would doubtless recant. The lapse of forty years gave Vyvyan Topsparkle the best possible security against the consequences of his guilt. The history of his crime might be guessed at, but could never be proved. "I will talk to the wretch to-night," said Lavendale; "yes, this very night. It is Lady Judith's assembly, by the bye, and all the world will be in Soho Square." "You can scarcely enter upon such a discussion at a party," said Herrick. "O, but I will make an opportunity; Topsparkle shall take me to his private rooms. I am on fire till I tell that ancient reprobate my mind about him." "And if he should challenge you?"