"No, my lord; I left England because I was tired of a country in which the fine arts were still in their infancy. We have been improving since Handel and Bononcini came to London. In William's time there were not half a dozen good musicians in the kingdom. I wonder, Lord Lavendale, that you should take occasion to insult me upon the strength of a slander which I trampled out forty years ago, when my slanderers stood in the pillory."
"Mr. Topsparkle, there are crimes which never can be brought home to the evil-doers; but there are other wrongs more easily proved even after a lapse of years. I cannot prove you a murderer, though I have the strongest moral evidence of your crime: first from the testimony of your victim's grandfather, Vincenti, and secondly from the confession of your accomplice and agent. But one act in your life I can prove to all the world, if it should be necessary to show the town what manner of man you are. I can at least demonstrate your hardness of heart as a father; how you, the sybarite and Crœsus, were content to let your daughter expire in poverty."
"I have never acknowledged a daughter."
"But she was none the less your child—the child born in this house—the helpless babe whose unhappy mother you and Fétis poisoned."
"'Tis false—a vile calumny—and you know it."
"'Tis true, and you know it. Your victim is gone beyond the reach of earthly redress—your daughter has been dead twenty years; but there is yet one living to whom, ere that frail, vanishing figure of yours melts from this earth, you may make some atonement for past evil. Your granddaughter, Philip Chumleigh's orphan child, is my friend Herrick Durnford's wife. To her you may yet act a grandfather's part."
"Mr. Durnford ran away with Mr. Bosworth's daughter."
"With Bosworth's supposed daughter only. The likeness which that young lady bears to the picture at Ringwood Abbey is no accident, but the clue to a secret which my friend and I have discovered. Those letters from your confidential servant were on the person of Irene's father when Squire Bosworth found him lying dead on Flamestead common, with his infant daughter by his side."
He showed Mr. Topsparkle the letters from Fétis, scarce trusting them out of his own hand as the gentleman examined them, lest he should fling them into the fire. And then he related the circumstances of Irene's infancy: the nameless orphan and the little heiress brought up together; and how the Squire had been tricked by a malignant woman—a discarded mistress, eager to seize the first opportunity to do evil to her inconstant lover.
Topsparkle would fain have disbelieved the story; but that extraordinary resemblance between Irene and the picture was an evidence which he could scarce gainsay; while the existence of those letters from Fétis made a link between the past and the present. He had been startled and mystified by that likeness between the living and the dead; for it was something closer and more significant than a mere resemblance of features and complexion; and there was the likeness of character, the hereditary type, the indescribable Italian beauty as distinct from every other race. No, Vyvyan Topsparkle was not inclined to deny the claim of this girl.