"I wonder," cried Walter, unconscious of the inconsistency, "that you can permit yourself to mention her name." "Poor little thing," he replied, "I am sincerely sorry for her. Had I foreseen what was going to happen I should have guarded against it. You may tell her so. Everything that is subject to human conditions is inconsistent and irregular. But on the whole, taking life altogether, there is not so much to be regretted. Probably she is happier _there_ than had she embarked, as she was about to do, in a struggle with me. Those who contend with me have not an easy career before them." "Yet one day it will have to be done," Walter said. "Yes. You consent then that I am not unknown, however undesired," the stranger said, with a smile. He was so entirely at his ease, at his leisure, as if he had hours before him, that Walter, gazing in an impatience beyond words, felt the hopelessness of any effort to hurry through the interview, and dropped into his seat with a sigh of reluctance and despair. "Who are you?" he cried; "and why, in the name of God, do you thus torment and afflict a whole race?" "The statement is scarcely correct. I was a Highland youth of no pretension once, and you are supposed to be Lord Erradeen, not only a Scotch lord, but an English peer. That is what my tormenting and afflicting have come to, with many solid acres and precious things besides. Very few families of our antiquity have even survived these centuries. Not one has grown and increased to the point at which we stand. I see a great addition within our reach now." "And what good has it all done?" Walter said. "They say that my predecessor was a miserable man, and I know that I--since this elevation, as you think it--have been----" "Good for nothing. I allow it fully. What were you before? Equally good for nothing; consuming your mother's means, opposing her wishes, faithful to no one. My friend, a man who sets himself against me must be something different from that." To this Walter made no reply. He could not be called penitent for the folly of his life; but he was aware of it. And he did not attempt to defend himself. He was entirely silenced for the moment: and the other resumed. "I have always felt it to be probable that some one capable of resistance might arise in time. In the mean time all that has happened has been gain, and my work has been fully successful. It would rather please me to meet one in the course of the ages who was fit to be my conqueror, being my son. It is a contingency which I have always taken into consideration. But it is not likely to be you," he said, with a slight laugh. "I shall know my victor when he comes." "Why should it not be I? If it be enough to hate this tyrannical influence, this cruel despotism----"