“You may perhaps be a nobler man,” she had said, with her hand resting fondly on his chestnut curls, “for having been reared in obscurity, instead of an heir to great possessions; you will, at all events, realize that a noble character is more to be desired than a mere noble-sounding name, and if you should ever rise to eminence by your own efforts, you will not forget the teachings of your mother, and they will help to keep you in the path of rectitude and honor.”
He remembered those last words now, and though he was always comforted when he thought of them, yet he could not keep down the wish that she might have lived, and he been permitted to see her face light up with hope and joy that there was no stain resting upon her or him.
But doubtless she knew it all in Heaven now, and was rejoicing on his account.
He was no longer a nameless outcast from society; he could now hold his head aloft with the proudest in the land—he had no cause for shame, save the knowledge that his father had been one of the vilest villains who walked the face of the earth.
“Where was he now?” he wondered, a hot flush of anger mounting his brow, as it always did when he thought of him.
Was he living or dead?
Dead, he hoped, but that was a thing he had yet to find out.
He wondered how the Marquis of Wycliffe would receive the knowledge that he had gained to-day.
He could now seek him and claim his inheritance if he chose—there was no reason why he should not do so, except that his heart shrank with indignation and bitterness from the stern man who, with a face of flint, had sent his mother, a tender, suffering woman, so cruelly into the world to wrestle with life’s stern realities, with neither sympathy nor love to smooth its rough way.
He knew that he should claim his inheritance some time; it belonged to him as Marion’s legitimate son, and according to the conditions of the old marquis’ will.