"Exactly; then I volunteered for our second battalion when the mutiny broke out, saw a good deal of very unpleasant service, was slightly hit, got fever, more from fatigue than wounds, was ordered home on sick leave, and found my brevet awaiting me. I have just returned from the German baths—and now, my lord, I am at your service."
"You want to know why I sent for you—you shall hear presently;" the old men paused abruptly. "You are like, and yet unlike, your father," he resumed; "you know, I suppose, that, although but first cousins, we might have been brothers, we hated each other so well?"
"I have heard something of it," returned Wilton, coolly, though the smiling, frank expression passed from his face; "but I have lived so much among strangers that I am lamentably ignorant of the family hatreds."
Lord St. George looked up, and played more rapidly with his seals. "I have been a broken man for many years," he resumed, after a short pause, "and latterly a complete recluse. Men are such knaves, and life is such a round of folly, amusement, and ambition, and 'lofty aspirations,' as modern scribblers have it, such dust and ashes, that I can with unusual truth say I am weary! I dare say you are wondering why I inflict this Jeremiad upon you—I hardly know myself; however, it is finished. I suppose you are aware that a very small portion of my property is attached to the title of St. George?"
Colonel Wilton bowed, and listened with increasing interest. "My Worzelshire estates and Welsh mines," continued the old lord, "came to me through my mother, and are to dispose of as I choose. A ruined tower and some worthless moorland is all that will come by right to you. It is in my power to make you that most wretched of failures—a poor nobleman, or to bequeath you means to ruffle it with the best."
"You must do as seems best in your eyes," said Colonel Wilton, with the same good-humored, well-bred independence which had characterized his manner all through the interview, when the peer stopped, as if for a reply.
"I am by no means inclined to separate my property from my title—but it is all in my own hands—I have no claims upon me—no nearer relative than yourself. All that I have heard of you is tolerably creditable to the family name, and I am inclined to give you the means to keep up the old title. There is one point, however, on which I should like you to understand and conform to my wishes. You are, of course, aware of the circumstance which has blighted my life—the latter half of it?"
Although it seemed impossible that any living cheek could be paler than Lord St. George's, it grew a shade more ghastly as he spoke.
"Yes, yes," returned Colonel Wilton, with a sort of quick sympathy. "Do not, if possible, distress yourself by alluding to it."
"I must, Ralph—I must!" It was the first time the viscount had called him by his name; and he continued, in a firm but low voice: "When my daughter, my only child, flung herself into an abyss of infamy by her disgraceful marriage, I at once and forever renounced her. Now I only care that the inheritors of my name and property may at least be free from the taint of inferior race: promise me you will marry a gentlewoman, a girl of some unblemished family, which, though they are few, can still be found—promise me this, and I will leave you all I possess."