“Does it?” he answered; “does it really? Well, say it may be held to imply, in general terms, a motto--_Vive et vivas_; or, to put it specifically, If you don’t interfere with me, I won’t interfere with you.” “Ah! now you puzzle me entirely--as much, I confess, as the strangeness of your being down here, alone at eleven o’clock in the morning, puzzles me.” “Why, that is easily explained,” he said. “I have just been walking with Lady Skene in that delightful bower--a little cold just now--called the Baby’s Garden, and I took this path upon leaving her, as being the shortest and the most private.” “O! Why as the most private, may I ask?” He leaned upon his stick, hat in hand, conning me with a smiling archness. “Don’t you know? Don’t you know, indeed, my dear boy? But of course you do; or why should I be here?” “That is for you to say.” “You have inherited frankness, I see. I have always been a model of frankness myself. I am glad to hear you pay that debt to your inheritance, Richard.” I was gathering, at last, something of his drift. He was feeling his way to my sense of filial duty. I could have struck my fist into his accursed dandy face. No doubt he had heard from Lady Skene the facts of that interview between us in her boudoir, and had assumed, as she had assumed, that the knowledge of my parentage was a revelation to me. Let him rejoice then, and scheme on that premise, and set the trap to his own damnation. It was for me now, with all that frenzy of hatred tingling at my finger-ends, to nurse his delusion for him, and play the double hypocritical part. I was surprised, even, at the resources of Machiavellianism I discovered in myself. “Mr Dalston,” I said, “as you flatter me for candour, I will be as candid as you could wish. I am aware, as you imply, that you have been drawing upon Lady Skene for money, and I know the reason.” “That’s capital,” he said--“that’s very capital and engaging. Well, now, consider, Richard; love-children are not generally regarded in the light of very eligible partis, are they? especially when franked by no financial recommendations. Lord Skene would hardly look upon such a one as a suitable match for a ward-at-law--and a particularly charming and well-endowed ward-at-law, I will say. I only put it to you that the revelation of such a suitor’s legal status would hardly appeal favourably to a guardian. Now would it? Better, at least, for him, I think, to make no boast of his moral disability. It is nothing but a question of terms, after all; but upon such, alas! are our ridiculous conventions founded.” How could I listen to him, and not spring at his murderous, lying throat? His very nameless reference to the subject of my most sacred hopes was a blasphemy scarce tolerable. But I kept my sense of the enormous issues that hung upon my self-command, and I dealt him back his double-dealing to the hilt.