ylwin, is it possible that the anniversary of a day so
momentous for the world is forgotten--forgotten by the very issue of
the great man's loins?'

'The fact is,' said I, in some confusion, 'I have been living with
the Gypsies, and, you see, Mr. Wilderspin, the passage of time--'

'The son of Philip Aylwin a Gypsy!' murmured Wilderspin meditatively,
and unconscious evidently that he was speaking aloud--'a Gypsy! Still
it would surely be a mistake to suppose,' he continued, perfectly
oblivious now of my presence, 'that the vagaries of his son can
really bring shame upon the head of the father.'

'But, by God!' I cried, 'it is no mistake that the vagaries of the
father can bring shame and sorrow and misery upon the child. I could
name a couple of fathers--sleeping very close to each other
now--whose vagaries--'

My sudden anger was carrying me away; but I stopped, recollecting
myself.

'Doubtless,' said Wilderspin, 'there are fathers and fathers. The son
of Philip Aylwin has assuredly a right to be critical in regard to
all other fathers than his own.'

I looked in his face; the expression of solemn earnestness was quite
unmistakable.

'It is not you,' I said, 'it is Heaven, or else it is the blind
jester Circumstance, that is playing this joke upon me!'

'To your honoured father,' he continued, taking not the slightest
notice of my interjection, 'I owe everything. From his grave he
supports my soul; from his grave he gives me ideas; from his grave
he makes my fame. How should I fail to honour his son, even though
he--'

Of course he was going to add--'even though he be a vagabond
associating with vagabonds,'--but he left the sentence unfinished.

'I confess, Mr. Wilderspin,' said I, 'that you speak in such enigmas
that it would be folly for me to attempt to answer you.'

'I wish,' said Wilderspin, 'that all enigmas were as soluble as this.
Let me ask you a question, sir. When you stood before my picture,
"Faith and Love," in Bond Street, did you not perceive that both it
and the predella were inspired entirely by your father's great work,
_The Veiled Queen_, or rather that they are mere pictorial
renderings and illustrations of that grand effort of man's soul in
its loftiest development?'

I had never heard of the picture in question. As for the book, my
father, perceiving my great dislike of mysticism, had always shrunk
from showing me any effusion of his that was not of a simply
antiquarian kind. In S