There was an unseemly old heathen visited us once upon a time, who made himself very merry over Lord Skene’s “atonement,” as he called it. This was Sir Maurice Carnac, ex-governor of Madras, who had been an intimate friend of his lordship in the sixties, and who now, on his retirement, after twenty years’ service, came to renew the acquaintance. From him I learned, at discretion, not a few facts hitherto unknown to me: how, for instance, my stepfather, in the matter of his second marriage, had been “cast into a net by his own feet” in their very hope of going astray, which was to imply that he had been caught to matrimony in the act of trying to evade it; how Lady Skene had no sooner conquered him by her beauty, than she had used it to the subjugation of the old Adam she had entertained, by holding it the prize to his strict reformation; how, in short, she had made a tame and orderly spouse out of the most unpromising material possible. Sir Maurice had no great delicacy, it is to be feared, though he could be mum on some points on which I sought enlightenment. Of Lady Skene’s social status before her marriage he would not speak; though I certainly gathered from him that it was inconsiderable. “Take Fortune’s gifts, my lad,” he said, “and hold your silly tongue. It’s time to question her when she turns on you.” “Scruples,” I began. “Scruples be damned,” said he. “What has a ranker need of scruples? Ain’t you promoted for your mother’s son?” That was the truth of it, and, to confess myself, the sorrow. I was not a loved child, conscious of rights or merits. I was an “encumbrance.” A dreamy, rather morbid temperament oppressed me with the weight of my own burden on the situation. Not that I was ever treated unkindly; but there is an endurance that is harder than neglect. It might be thought that Lady Skene would have wished to exalt her own, especially as she bore her husband no family. She was indifferent to me, however, and so I could not but be to her. We were not kindred spirits, and were antipathetic to one another. Her soul inhabited a chapel; mine the woods and mountains of a roaming fancy. I never felt “at home” with her; and I think she had writ me down early for one of the unelect. Predestination is a comfortable creed for those who would eschew parental responsibilities. It is vain carving a brand that is destined for the burning.