because Timothy Petrick had
nothing to say. After idling away his mornings in this manner, Petrick
would go to his own room and swear in long loud whispers, and walk up and
down, calling himself the most ridiculous dolt that ever lived, and
declaring that he would never go near the little fellow again; to which
resolve he would adhere for the space perhaps of a day. Such cases are
happily not new to human nature, but there never was a case in which a
man more completely befocled his former self than in this.

As the child grew up, Timothy's attachment to him grew deeper, till
Rupert became almost the sole object for which he lived. There had been
enough of the family ambition latent in him for Timothy Petrick to feel a
little envy when, some time before this date, his brother Edward had been
accepted by the Honourable Harriet Mountclere, daughter of the second
Viscount of that name and title; but having discovered, as I have before
stated, the paternity of his boy Rupert to lurk in even a higher stratum
of society, those envious feelings speedily dispersed. Indeed, the more
he reflected thereon, after his brother's aristocratic marriage, the more
content did he become. His late wife took softer outline in his memory,
as he thought of the lofty taste she had displayed, though only a plain
burgher's daughter, and the justification for his weakness in loving the
child--the justification that he had longed for--was afforded now in the
knowledge that the boy was by nature, if not by name, a representative of
one of the noblest houses in England.

'She was a woman of grand instincts, after all,' he said to himself
proudly. 'To fix her choice upon the immediate successor in that ducal
line--it was finely conceived! Had he been of low blood like myself or
my relations she would scarce have deserved the harsh measure that I have
dealt out to her and her offspring. How much less, then, when such
grovelling tastes were farthest from her soul! The man Annetta loved was
noble, and my boy is noble in spite of me.'

The afterclap was inevitable, and it soon came. 'So far,' he reasoned,
'from cutting off this child from inheritance of my estates, as I have
done, I should have rejoiced in the possession of him! He is of pure
stock on one side at least, whilst in the ordinary run of affairs he
would have been a commoner to the bone.'

Being a man, whatever his faults, of good old beliefs in the divinity of
kings and those a