“He told me that he had destroyed the registry of their marriage, nor does he know where a single witness of the ceremony could be found.”
“I don't want to know how he could make the amende till I know that he is ready to do it,” said she, in the same calm tone.
“To have arranged a meeting with the boy had perhaps been better than this. Glencore has not avowed it, but I think I can detect misgivings for his treatment of the youth.”
“This was my first thought, and I spoke to young Massy the evening before Lord Glencore arrived. I led him to tell me of his boyish days in Ireland and his home there; a stern resolution to master all emotion seemed to pervade whatever he said; and though, perhaps, the effort may have cost him much, his manner did not betray it. He told me that he was illegitimate, that the secret was divulged to him by his own father, that he had never heard who his mother was, nor what rank in life she occupied. When I said that she was one in high station, that she was alive and well, and one of my own dearest friends, a sudden crimson covered his face, as quickly followed by a sickly pallor; and though he trembled in every limb, he never spoke a word. I endeavored to excite in him some desire to learn more of her, if not to see her, but in vain. The hard lesson he had taught himself enabled him to repress every semblance of feeling. It was only when at last, driven to the very limits of my patience, I abruptly asked him, 'Have you no wish to see your mother?' that his coldness gave way, and, in a voice tremulous and thick, he said, 'My shame is enough for myself.' I was burning to say more, to put before him a contingency, the mere shadow of a possibility that his claim to birth and station might one day or other be vindicated. I did not actually do so, but I must have let drop some chance word that betrayed my meaning, for he caught me up quickly, and said, 'It would come too late, if it came even to-day. I am that which I am by many a hard struggle; you 'll never see me risk a disappointment in life by any encouragement I may give to hope.'
“I then adverted to his father; but he checked me at once, saying, 'When the ties that should be closest in life are stained with shame and dishonor, they are bonds of slavery, not of affection. My debt to Lord Glencore is the degradation I live in,—none other. His heritage to me is the undying conflict in my heart between what I once thought I was and what I now know I am. If we met, it would be to tell him so.' In a word, every feature of the father's proud unforgivingness is reproduced in the boy, and I dreaded the very possibility of their meeting. If ever Lord Glencore avow his marriage and vindicate his wife's honor, his hardest task will be reconciliation with this boy.”
“All, and more than all, the evils I anticipated have followed this insane vengeance,” said Upton. “I begin to think that one ought to leave a golden bridge even to our revenge, Princess.”
“Assuredly, wherever a woman is the victim,” said she, smiling; “for you are so certain to have reasons for distrusting yourself.”
Upton sat meditating for some time on the plan of the Princess; had it only originated with himself, it was exactly the kind of project he would have liked. He knew enough of life to be aware that one can do very little more than launch events upon the great ocean of destiny; that the pretension to guide and direct them is oftener a snare than anything else; that the contingencies and accidents, the complications too, which beset every move in life, disconcert all one's pre-arrangements, so that it is rare indeed when we are able to pursue the same path towards any object by which we have set out.
As the scheme was, however, that of another, he now scrutinized it, and weighed every objection to its accomplishment, constantly returning to the same difficulty, as he said,—
“You do not know Glencore.”