“Rid of them! I do not know that. I saw a great deal of the Duke of Modena this year, and tried as well as I could to open his mind to the situation.”
“You traitor!” exclaimed Mr. Wilton. “If I were Secretary of State, I would order the butler to arrest you immediately, and send you to the Tower in a hack cab; but as I am only a President of a Board and your uncle, you will escape.”
“Well, I should think all sensible men,” said Waldershare, “of all parties will agree, that before we try a republic, it would be better to give a chance to the rightful heir.”
“Well, I am not a republican,” said Mr. Wilton, “and I think Queen Victoria, particularly if she make a wise and happy marriage, need not much fear the Duke of Modena.”
“He is our sovereign lord, all the same,” said Waldershare. “I wish he were more aware of it himself. Instead of looking to a restoration to his throne, I found him always harping on the fear of French invasion. I could not make him understand that France was his natural ally, and that without her help, Charlie was not likely to have his own again.”
“Well, as you admire pretenders, George, I wish you were in my shoes this morning, for I have got one of the most disagreeable interviews on hand which ever fell to my lot.”
“How so, my dear uncle?” said Waldershare, in a tone of sympathy, for he saw that the countenance of Mr. Wilton was disturbed.
“My unhappy ward,” said Mr. Wilton; “you know, of course, something about him.”
“Well, I was at school and college,” said Waldershare, “when it all happened. But I have just heard that you had relations with him.”
“The most intimate; and there is the bitterness. There existed between his mother Queen Agrippina and myself ties of entire friendship. In her last years and in her greatest adversity she appealed to me to be the guardian of her son. He inherited all her beauty and apparently all her sweetness of disposition. I took the greatest pains with him. He was at Eton, and did well there. He was very popular; I never was so deceived in a boy in my life. I though him the most docile of human beings, and that I had gained over him an entire influence. I am sure it would have been exercised for his benefit. In short, I may say it now, I looked upon him as a son, and he certainly would have been my heir; and yet all this time, from his seventeenth year, he was immersed in political intrigue, and carrying on plots against the sovereign of his country, even under my own roof.”