LITMIR.BIZ

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except my courier, Sanson, is there a living witness. If you determine to assert it, you will do so without a fragment of proof, since every document that could substantiate it is in my keeping. You shall see them for yourself. She is, therefore, in my power; and will any man dare to tell me how I should temper that power?”

      “But your boy, Glencore, your boy!”

      “Is my boy’s station in the world a prouder one by being the son of the notorious Lady Glencore, or as the offspring of a nameless mistress? What avail to him that he should have a title stained by her shame? Where is he to go? In what land is he to live, where her infamy has not reached? Is it not a thousand times better that he enter life ignoble and unknown, – to start in the world’s race with what he may of strength and power, – than drag on an unhonored existence, shunned by his equals, and only welcome where it is disgrace to find companionship?”

      “But you surely have never contemplated all the consequences of this rash resolve. It is the extinction of an ancient title, the alienation of a great estate, when once you have declared your boy illegitimate.”

      “He is a beggar: I know it; the penalty he must pay is a heavy one. But think of her, Upton, – think of the haughty Viscountess, revelling in splendor, and, even in all her shame, the flattered, welcomed guest of that rotten, corrupt society she lives in. Imagine her in all the pride of wealth and beauty, sought after, adulated, worshipped as she is, suddenly struck down by the brand of this disgrace, and left upon the world without fortune, without rank, without even a name. To be shunned like a leper by the very meanest of those it had once been an honor when she recognized them. Picture to yourself this woman, degraded to the position of all that is most vile and contemptible. She, that scarcely condescended to acknowledge as her equals the best-born and the highest, sunk down to the hopeless infamy of a mistress. They tell me she laughed on the day I fainted at seeing her entering the San Carlos at Naples, – laughed as they carried me down the steps into the fresh air! Will she laugh now, think you? Shall I be called ‘Le Pauvre Sire’ when she hears this? Was there ever a vengeance more terrible, more complete?”

      “Again, I say, Glencore, you have no right to involve others in the penalty of her fault. Laying aside every higher motive, you can have no more right to deny your boy’s claim to his rank and fortune than I or any one else. It cannot be alienated nor extinguished; by his birth he became the heir to your title and estates.”

      “He has no birth, sir, he is a bastard: who shall deny it? You may,” added he, after a second’s pause; “but where’s your proof? Is not every probability as much against you as all documentary evidence, since none will ever believe that I could rob myself of the succession, and make over my fortune to Heaven knows what remote relation?”

      “And do you expect me to become a party to this crime?” asked Upton, gravely.

      “You balked me in one attempt at vengeance, and I think you owe me a reparation!”

      “Glencore,” said Upton, solemnly, “we are both of us men of the world, – men who have seen life in all its varied aspects sufficiently to know the hollowness of more than half the pretension men trade upon as principle; we have witnessed mean actions and the very lowest motives amongst the highest in station; and it is not for either of us to affect any overstrained estimate of men’s honor and good faith; but I say to you, in all sincerity, that not alone do I refuse you all concurrence in the act you meditate, but I hold myself open to denounce and frustrate it.”

      “You do!” cried Glencore, wildly, while with a bound he sat up in his bed, grasping the curtain convulsively for support.

      “Be calm, Glencore, and listen to me patiently.”

      “You declare that you will use the confidence of this morning against me!” cried Glencore, while the lines in his face became indented more deeply, and his bloodless lips quivered with passion. “You take your part with her!”

      “I only ask that you would hear me.”

      “You owe me four thousand five hundred pounds, Sir Horace Upton,” said Glencore, in a voice barely above a whisper, but every accent of which was audible.

      “I know it, Glencore,” said Upton, calmly. “You helped me by a loan of that sum in a moment of great difficulty. Your generosity went farther, for you took, what nobody else would, my personal security.”

      Glencore made no reply, but, throwing back the bedclothes, slowly and painfully arose, and with tottering and uncertain steps approached a table. With a trembling hand he unlocked a drawer, and taking out a paper, opened and scanned it over.

      “There’s your bond, sir,” said he, with a hollow, cavernous voice, as he threw it into the fire, and crushed it down into the flames with a poker. “There is now nothing between us. You are free to do your worst!” And as he spoke, a few drops of dark blood trickled from his nostril, and he fell senseless upon the floor.

      CHAPTER XI. SOME LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF DIPLOMATIC LIFE

      There is a trait in the lives of great diplomatists of which it is just possible some one or other of my readers may not have heard, which is, that none of them have ever attained to any great eminence without an attachment – we can find no better word for it – to some woman of superior understanding who has united within herself great talents for society with a high and soaring ambition.

      They who only recognize in the world of politics the dry details of ordinary parliamentary business, poor-law questions, sanitary rules, railroad bills, and colonial grants can form but a scanty notion of the excitement derived from the high interests of party, and the great game played by about twenty mighty gamblers, with the whole world for the table, and kingdoms for counters. In this “grand rôle” women perform no ignoble part; nay, it were not too much to say that theirs is the very motive-power of the whole vast machinery.

      Had we any right to step beyond the limits of our story for illustration, it would not be difficult to quote names enough to show that we are speaking not at hazard, but “from book,” and that great events derive far less of their impulse from “the lords” than from “the ladies of creation.” Whatever be the part they take in these contests, their chief attention is ever directed, not to the smaller battle-field of home questions, but to the greater and wider campaign of international politics. Men may wrangle and hair-split, and divide about a harbor bill or a road cession; but women occupy themselves in devising how thrones may be shaken and dynasties disturbed, – how frontiers may be changed, and nationalities trafficked; for, strange as it may seem, the stupendous incidents which mould human destinies are more under the influence of passion and intrigue than the commonest events of every-day life.

      Our readers may, and not very unreasonably, begin to suspect that it was in some moment of abstraction we wrote “Glencore” at the head of these pages, and that these speculations are but the preface to some very abstruse reflections upon the political condition of Europe. But no; they are simply intended as a prelude to the fact that Sir Horace Upton was not exempt from the weakness of his order, and that he, too, reposed his trust upon a woman’s judgment.

      The name of his illustrious guide was the Princess Sabloukoff, by birth a Pole, but married to a Russian of vast wealth and high family, from whom she separated early in life, to mingle in the world with all the “prestige” of position, riches, and – greater than either – extreme beauty, and a manner of such fascination as made her name of European celebrity.

      When Sir Horace first met her, he was the junior member of our Embassy at Naples, and she the distinguished leader of fashion in that city. We are not about to busy ourselves with the various narratives which professed to explain her influence at Court, or the secret means to which she owed her ascendency over royal highnesses, and her sway over cardinals. Enough that she possessed such, and that the world knew it. The same success attended her at Vienna and at Paris. She was courted and sought after everywhere; and if her arrival was not fêted with the public demonstrations that await royalty, it was assuredly an event recognized with all that could flatter her vanity or minister to her self-esteem.

      When Sir Horace was presented to her as an Attaché, she simply bowed and smiled. He renewed his acquaintance

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