beautiful boy than for himself. He had fully resolved
to be member for the county one day; but he did not care about it for
himself; it was only to pave the way for his successor; that Sir
Reginald, after a long career in the Commons, might find his way into
the House of Peers, and so obtain dignity in exchange for antiquity;
for, to tell the truth, the ancestors of four-fifths of the British
House of Peers had been hewers of wood and drawers of water at a time
when these Bassetts had already been gentlemen of distinction for
centuries.

All this love and this vicarious ambition were now mortified daily.
Some fathers could do wonders for a brilliant boy, and with him; they
expect him, and a dull boy appears; that is a bitter pill; but this was
worse. Reginald was a sharp boy; he could do anything; fasten him to a
book for twenty minutes, he would learn as much as most boys in an
hour; but there was no keeping him to it, unless you strapped him or
nailed him, for he had the will of a mule, and the suppleness of an eel
to carry out his will. And then his tastes--low as his features were
refined; he was a sort of moral dung-fork; picked up all the slang of
the stable and scattered it in the dining-room and drawing-room; and
once or twice he stole out of his comfortable room at night, and slept
in a gypsy's tent with his arm round a gypsy boy, unsullied from his
cradle by soap.

At last Sir Charles could no longer reply to his wife at night as he
had done for this ten years past. He was obliged to confess that there
was one cloud upon his happiness. "Dear Reginald grieves me, and makes
me dread the future; for if the child is father to the man, there is a
bitter disappointment in store for us. He is like no other boy; he is
like no human creature I ever saw. At his age, and long after, I was a
fool; I was a fool till I knew you; but surely I was a gentleman. I
cannot see myself again--in my first-born."

CHAPTER XXXVII.

LADY BASSETT was paralyzed for a minute or two by this speech. At last
she replied by asking a question--rather a curious one. "Who nursed
you, Charles?"

"What, when I was a baby? How can I tell? Yes, by-the-by, it was my
mother nursed me--so I was told."

"And your mother was a Le Compton. This poor boy was nursed by a
servant. Oh, she has some good qualities, and is certainly devoted to
us--to this day her face brightens at sight of me--but she is
essentially vulgar; and do you remember, C