"As you have hated every influence and every rule all your life," said the other with a smile. "That is not the sort of man that does anything. Do you think it is agreeable to me to be the progenitor of a race of nobodies? I compensate myself by making them great against their will--the puppets! I allow you to wear my honours out of consideration to the prejudices of society: but they are all mine." "It was not you, however, who got them," said Walter. "Can a grandfather inherit what was given to his descendants?" "Come," said the stranger, "you are showing a little spirit--I like that better. Let us talk now of the immediate business in hand. You have something in your power which I did not foresee when I talked to you last. Then there were few opportunities of doing anything--nothing in your range that I had observed, but to clear off incumbrances, which, by the way, you refused to do. Now a trifling exertion on your part----" "You mean the sacrifice of my life." The stranger laughed--this time with a sense of the ludicrous which made his laugh ring through the room with the fullest enjoyment. "The sacrifice of a life, which has been made happy by ---- and by ---- and by ----. How many names would you like me to produce? You have perhaps a less opinion of women than I have. Which of them, if they knew all about it, as I do, would pick up that life and unite their own to it? But happily they don't know. She thinks perhaps--that girl on the isle--that I mean her harm. I mean her no harm--why should I harm her? I harm no one who does not step into my way." "Man!" cried Walter--"if you are a man--would you hurt her for succouring me? Would you treat her as you treated----" "That was an accident," he said quickly. "I have told you already I would have guarded against it had I divined----But your limited life is the very empire of accident; and those who come across my path must take the consequences. It is their own fault if they put themselves in the way of danger. Let us return to the subject in hand. The woman whom you must marry----" The words suddenly seemed to close on the air, leaving no sort of echo or thrill in it; and Walter, looking round, saw Symington come in with the scared look he remembered to have seen in the old man's countenance before, though without any sign in him of seeing the stranger. He asked in a hesitating manner, "Did ye ring, my lord? You'll be wanting your dinner. It is just ready to come up."