“Just dip the end of that towel in the water, Upton, and give it to me,” cried he at last; and then, wiping his face and forehead, said, “Have I heard you aright,--there was no marriage?” Upton nodded assent. “What a shameful way he has treated this poor boy, then!” cried the other. “I never heard of anything equal to it in cruelty, and I conclude it was breaking this news to the lad that drove him out to sea on that night, and brought on this brain fever. By Jove, I 'd not take _his_ title, and _your_ brains, to have such a sin on my conscience!” “We are happily not called on to judge the act,” said Upton, cautiously. “And why not? Is it not every honest man's duty to reprobate whatever he detects dishonorable or disgraceful? I do judge him, and sentence him too, and I say, moreover, that a more cold-blooded piece of cruelty I never heard of. He trains up this poor boy from childhood to fancy himself the heir to his station and fortune; he nurses in him all the pride that only a high rank can cover; and then, when the lad's years have brought him to the period when these things assume all their value, he sends for him to tell him he is a bastard.” “It is not impossible that I think worse of Glencore's conduct than you do yourself,” said Upton, gravely. “But you never told him so, I'll be sworn,--you never said to him it was a rascally action. I'll lay a hundred pounds on it, you only expostulated on the inexpediency, or the inconvenience, or some such trumpery consideration, and did not tell him, in round numbers, that what he had done was an infamy.” “Then I fancy you'd lose your money, pretty much as you are losing your temper,--that is, without getting anything in requital.” “What did you say to him, then?” said Harcourt, slightly abashed. “A great deal in the same strain as you have just spoken in, doubtless not as warm in vituperation, but possibly as likely to produce an effect; nor is it in the least necessary to dwell upon that. What Glencore has done, and what I have said about it, both belong to the past. They are over,--they are irrevocable. It is to what concerns the present and the future I wish now to address myself, and to interest you.” “Why, the boy's name was in the Peerage,--I read it there myself.” “My dear Harcourt, you must have paid very little attention to me a while ago, or you would have understood how that occurred.” “And here were all the people, the tenantry on the estate, calling him the young lord, and the poor fellow growing up with the proud consciousness that the title was his due.” “There is not a hardship of the case I have not pictured to my own mind as forcibly as you can describe it,” said Upton; “but I really do not perceive that any reprobation of the past has in the slightest assisted me in providing for the future.”