“And I have outstayed all your guests,” said De Vaudemont, glancing round the emptied room. “It is the best compliment you could pay me. Another night we can enliven our tete-a-tete with ecarte; though at your age, and with your appearance, I am surprised, Monsieur de Vaudemont, that you are fond of play: I should have thought that it was not in a pack of cards that you looked for hearts. But perhaps you are _blase _betimes of the _beau sexe_.” “Yet your lordship’s devotion to it is, perhaps, as great now as ever?” “Mine?--no, not as ever. To different ages different degrees. At your age I wooed; at mine I purchase--the better plan of the two: it does not take up half so much time.” “Your marriage, I think, Lord Lilburne, was not blessed with children. Perhaps sometimes you feel the want of them?” “If I did, I could have them by the dozen. Other ladies have been more generous in that department than the late Lady Lilburne, Heaven rest her!” “And,” said Vaudemont, fixing his eyes with some earnestness on his host, “if you were really persuaded that you had a child, or perhaps a grandchild--the mother one whom you loved in your first youth--a child affectionate, beautiful, and especially needing your care and protection, would you not suffer that child, though illegitimate, to supply to you the want of filial affection?” “Filial affection, mon cher!” repeated Lord Lilburne, “needing my care and protection! Pshaw! In other words, would I give board and lodging to some young vagabond who was good enough to say he was son to Lord Lilburne?” “But if you were convinced that the claimant were your son, or perhaps your daughter--a tenderer name of the two, and a more helpless claimant?” “My dear Monsieur de Vaudemont, you are doubtless a man of gallantry and of the world. If the children whom the law forces on one are, nine times out of ten, such damnable plagues, judge if one would father those whom the law permits us to disown! Natural children are the pariahs of the world, and I--am one of the Brahmans.” “But,” persisted Vaudemont, “forgive me if I press the question farther. Perhaps I seek from your wisdom a guide to my own conduct;--suppose, then, a man had loved, had wronged, the mother;--suppose that in the child he saw one who, without his aid, might be exposed to every curse with which the pariahs (true, the pariahs!) of the world are too often visited, and who with his aid might become, as age advanced, his companion, his nurse, his comforter--”