The lad was at Eton, and happy—far happier than he could have been elsewhere. His mother immediately commenced a course which led her by a rapid descent to the lowest degradation. She returned to Paris. Aurelian felt it was useless now to interfere, neither could he afford more expense. She easily got upon the stage again, and became more popular than ever. At the age of forty she was even more handsome than in her youth. Her features had been refined by the passage of time and by the restraint to which she had been subjected. Her form was more fully developed. It is unpleasant to linger on this woman’s disgrace. She formed a _liaison_ with a rich foreign gentleman, retired with him from Paris after a time, and the _Stirmingham Daily Post_, which pursued the Baskettes with unmitigated hatred year after year, did not fail to chronicle the birth of a son. Aurelian, baffled, was not beaten. He was a resolute and patient man. Like the famous Carthaginian father, he brought up his son and educated him to consider the Baskette estates as the one object of his attention—only in this case it was not for destruction, but for preservation. When young John Marese Baskette, the heir, after distinguishing himself at Eton, was sent higher up the Thames to Oxford, Aurelian immediately placed his son, Theodore Marese, at the same college. The result was exactly as he had foreseen. The heir formed a bond of friendship—such as it is in these days—with Theodore. Their one topic of conversation was the estate. John was full of the most romantic notions. He was in youth a really exemplary lad—clever, hard-working, winning to himself the good will of all men. Theodore had a genuine liking for his cousin—then, at all events, though probably in after life the attachment he professed was chiefly caused by self interest. John was full of ambitious dreams. His vivid imagination had been worked upon by the talk among his companions about the famous owner of twenty millions sterling—his father. Upon an old bookstall he obtained a copy of “The Life of Sternhold Baskette,” now out of print. It inflamed him to the uttermost. There was good metal in the boy if he had only had friends and parents to put it to proper use. He formed the most extraordinary schemes as to what he would do with this wealth when he became of age, and stepped at one bound into the full enjoyment of it, as he supposed he should. It was all to be used for the alleviation of the misery of the world, for the relief of the poor, for the succouring of the afflicted, the advancement of all means that could mitigate the penalties attaching to human existence. As time wore on, however, these benevolent intentions received their first check.