But he hated himself with a righteous hatred for these evil haunting thoughts, that he had no moral power to exorcise.
From what he had heard from Lord Killcrichtoun, and from what he had observed with his own eyes, some things seemed very certain.
As that Lord Killcrichtoun would never be legally divorced from his first wife, and therefore would never be free to take a second; that he would never be reconciled to her, and therefore never have another child; that his lordship was in a very bad way and could not long hold the barony of Killcrichtoun; and, finally, that little Lenny would be the future Baron of Killcrichtoun, unless he should very soon die, or—disappear; and, finally, that little Lenny was not inclined to die to please anybody!
But there was that other alternative:—he might disappear—he might disappear as children had often done before now, he might disappear forever.
I know not at what precise time this last alternative presented itself to the poor gentleman’s mind. But it would not be banished, it clung to him, it tempted him, it nearly crazed him.
He prowled about Trafalgar square, and waylaid little Lenny and his nurse, and informed himself as to the child’s haunts and habits.
If Pina never spoke of this “poor white herring,” as she disrespectfully called him, it was because he was only one of several persons who, passing daily at the hours the nurse would be out with the child, would stop to notice him, to smile on him, or—when time permitted—to talk to him, being charmed by his infantile beauty, intelligence, and graciousness. And, even if the nurse had told the mother of this stranger’s seeming partiality for the child, the information would not have surprised her, for to Drusilla it seemed inevitable that every one who saw her peerless boy must be charmed and delighted with his beauty and brightness.
So unsuspected and unrestricted, Everage contrived to see a great deal of little Lenny—a great deal more than even his father saw of him.
But Alexander was entirely ignorant of these interviews, for Pina did not love little Lenny’s father well enough to gossip with him on that or any other subject, or indeed to open her mouth to him with one unnecessary word.
And the poor gentleman, for his part, took good care never to approach the child while his father happened to be near him.