urface of
the earth, worn out with penury, disease, and heart-ache. And now I am
Baptist Hatton with a fortune almost large enough to buy Mowbray itself,
and with knowledge that can make the proudest tremble.

"And for what object all this wealth and power? What memory shall I
leave? What family shall I found? Not a relative in the world, except
a solitary barbarian, from whom when, years ago I visited him as a
stranger I recoiled with unutterable loathing.

"Ah! had I a child--a child like the beautiful daughter of Gerard!"

And here mechanically Hatton filled his glass, and quaffed at once a
bumper.

"And I have deprived her of a principality! That seraphic being whose
lustre even now haunts my vision; the ring of whose silver tone even now
lingers in my ear. He must be a fiend who could injure her. I am that
fiend. Let me see--let me see!"

And now he seemed wrapt in the very paradise of some creative vision;
still he filled the glass, but this time he only sipped it, as if he
were afraid to disturb the clustering images around him.

"Let me see--let me see. I could make her a baroness. Gerard is as much
Baron Valence as Shrewsbury is a Talbot. Her name is Sybil. Curious how,
even when peasants, the good blood keeps the good old family names! The
Valences were ever Sybils.

"I could make her a baroness. Yes! and I could give her wherewith to
endow her state. I could compensate for the broad lands which should be
hers, and which perhaps through me she has forfeited.

"Could I do more? Could I restore her to the rank she would honour,
assuage these sharp pangs of conscience, and achieve the secret ambition
of my life? What if my son were to be Lord Valence?

"Is it too bold? A chartist delegate--a peasant's daughter. With all
that shining beauty that I witnessed, with all the marvellous gifts that
their friend Morley so descanted on,--would she shrink from me? I'm not
a crook-backed Richard.

"I could proffer much: I feel I could urge it plausibly. She must be
very wretched. With such a form, such high imaginings, such thoughts of
power and pomp as I could breathe in her,--I think she'd melt. And to
one of her own faith, too! To build up a great Catholic house again; of
the old blood, and the old names, and the old faith,--by holy Mary it is
a glorious vision!"

Book 4 Chapter 11

On the evening of the day that Egremont had met Sybil in the Abbey of
Westminster, and subsequently parted from her und