He turned away and passed his hand swiftly across his eyes as she mentioned those whom he had once loved so dearly and who, as all the world knows, were both torn from him in one short week! 'Twas by one of those dreadful visitations of smallpox which carries off kings and queens impartially with their humbler subjects, as was the case fifteen or sixteen years before, when it swept away the Emperor of Germany and the Dauphin and Dauphiness of France as well as their child, and also ravaged both those great countries. Then, turning back to us, he said: "But now, ere anything else can be done, I must know all that has occurred since your husband's death. Something I have heard from you, Louise, and something from other sources yet there is much I cannot comprehend. Nay, more, there are some things that seem incredible. It is said he was buried by the subscription of a few friends--many of them the lowest of the low, with whom he in life wassailed and caroused--yet, how could it be?" "He was penniless, Charles," my mother sobbed; "penniless. He had nothing." "Penniless! Penniless! Nay. Nay. His brother was here in London at the time and I bade him let Gerald have all necessaries in reason, and I dispatched to Mr. Considine a hundred guineas for his funeral by a sure hand. I could not let the heir to my title----" "What!" rang out my mother's voice clear and distinct, while I stared at the Marquis as though doubting whether he were bereft of his senses or I of my hearing. "What, you sent money by and to them for him? Oh! Charles, never did he receive one farthing of it." "So I have cause to fear. And I know not what is to be done with thy brother-in-law. He seems to be a rogue of the worst degree." But now she fixed her eyes upon him and exclaimed: "You say so, knowing only the little that you do know, that he and his base servant, Considine--Considine," she, repeated, "Considine, the traducer of my fame whom yet, if God spares me, I will have a heavy reckoning with; you know only that they have conspired to defraud my child of his rights, nay, more, of his honest name. That they have stolen the money you sent to succour my wretched husband in his last days and to bury him as he should be buried according to his rank and fashion when he was dead. That you know, Charles, Marquis of Amesbury, kinsman of this my child, but you do not know all. Will you hear their further villainies, will you know all that they have attempted on him; will you do this, you who are powerful and great, and then will you stretch forth your right hand and crush, as you can crush, these wretches to the earth while, at the same time, you also stretch forth that hand to shelter and protect this innocent child, your heir?"