disposition that
matched mine. After many quarrels, we parted in anger. I went my way, a
wild, desperate way; needless to tell you whither such a way leads.
Wrecked in character and prospects, I decided to be quit of the world. I
had thought of suicide--but God held my hand. Suffice it that I
disappeared, that I concocted a false report of my death, and so made
room for my younger brother, Talbot, to take the place in the world
which I had rendered myself unfit to fill."

There was a pause, during which the old man strove for composure.
Derrick began to tremble. He remembered Donna Elvira's strange
tenderness to him, his strange tenderness towards her; and something
vague and nebulous was growing out of the Marquess's words, a hope that,
in its intensity, was more painful than joyous.

"I did not know," went on the Marquess in a lower voice, and with
obvious difficulty, "that, when I left my wife, she was about to become
a mother. I did not know that a child was born to me--a son. If I had
known--well, the whole course of my life would have been altered from
that moment. I should have gone back to her, should have claimed my
child; perhaps it is because she knew that I should have done so that
she concealed the fact from me. Be that as it may, I was kept in
ignorance until this moment; and even now, she does not tell me,
but--her son."

He raised his eyes to Derrick with something in them that made Derrick's
heart leap, the tears spring to his eyes.

"Yes; you are my son," said Mr. Clendon, and he held out his hand.

Derrick, moving as if in a dream, took the thin hand and grasped it in
both of his.

"Oh, is it true?" was all he could say, huskily.

"It is quite true," said Mr. Clendon. "The certificates are enclosed;
there is a minute account of the way in which your mother placed you in
the charge of these people; there are even periodical receipts for the
sums she paid for your maintenance. As to your identity----"

"No doubts about that," murmured Mr. Jacobs, cheerfully. "Proved up to
the hilt. Marquess, I congratulate you--and you, too, Lord Heyton."

Now, indeed, Derrick started.

"Do you mean that I----?" he stammered, overwhelmed by the significance
of the title by which Mr. Jacobs had addressed him.

Mr. Jacobs nodded, as cheerfully as before. "Quite so," he said. "Your
father being the Marquess of Sutcombe, you are, of course, Lord Heyton."

Derrick sank on to a chair, still holding his father's