in a very whirlwind.
"I knew you had vices, I knew you had follies, I knew you wasted your
substance with debtors and gamblers like yourself, on courtesans and
gaming-tables, in Parisian enormities, and vaunted libertinage, but I
did not think that you were so utterly a traitor to your blood as to
bring disgrace to a name that never was approached by shame until _you_
bore it!"

Bertie's face flushed darkly, then he grew very pale. The indolence
with which he lay back in an ecarte-chair did not alter, however, and he
stroked his long moustaches a little with his habitual gentle
indifferentism.

"It is all over. Pray do not give it that tremendous earnestness," he
said, quietly. "Nothing is ever worth that; and I should prefer it if we
kept to the language of gentlemen!"

"The language of gentlemen is _for_ gentlemen," retorted the old man,
with fiery vehemence. His heart was cut to the core, and all his soul
was in revolt against the degradation to his name that came in the train
of his heir's ruin. "When a man has forgot that he has been a gentleman,
one may be pardoned for forgetting it also! You may have no honor left
for your career to shame; _I_ have--and, by God, sir, from this hour you
are no son of mine. I disown you--I know you no longer! Go and drag out
all the rest of a disgraced life in any idleness that you choose. If you
were to lie dying at my feet, I would not give you a crust!"

Bertie raised his eyebrows slightly.

"_Soit!_ But would it not be possible to intimate this quietly? A scene
is such very bad style--always exhausting, too!"

The languid calmness, the soft nonchalance of the tone, were like oil
upon flame to the old Lion's heart, lashed to fury and embittered with
pain as it was. A heavier oath than print will bear broke from him, with
a deadly imprecation, as he paced the library with swift, uneven steps.

"It had been better if your 'style' had been less and your decency and
your honor greater! One word more is all you will ever hear from my
lips. The title must come to you; that, unhappily, is not in my hands to
prevent. It must be yours when I die, if you have not been shot in some
gambling brawl or some bagnio abroad before then; but you will remember,
not a shilling of money, not a rood of the land are entailed; and, by
the heaven above us, every farthing, every acre shall be willed to the
young children. _You_ are disinherited, sir--disowned for ever--if you
died at my feet! No