d Mr.
Tatham remained undisturbed. As it was, John had some ten minutes to
wait before his habitual hansom drew up at the door.

It was not the first time by many times that Mr. Tatham had considered
the question which he now took with him into his hansom, and which
occupied him more or less all the way to Halkin Street. Lady Mariamne,
however, had put it very neatly and very conclusively when she said that
you can't hide the heir to a peerage--more concisely at least than John
had himself put it in his many thoughts on the subject--for, to tell the
truth, John had never considered the boy in this aspect. That he should
ever be the heir to a peerage had seemed one of those possibilities
which so outrage nature, and are so very like fiction, that the sober
mind rejects them with almost a fling of impatience. And yet how often
they come true! He had never heard--a fact of which he felt partly
ashamed, for it was an event of too much importance to be ignored
by any one connected with Elinor--of Hal Compton's death. John was not
acquainted with Hal Compton any more than he was with other men who come
and go in society, occasionally seen, but open to no particular remark.
A son of Lord St. Serf--the best of the lot--a Compton with very little
against him: these were things which he had heard said and had taken
little notice of. Hal was healthier, less objectionable, a better life
than Phil's, and yet Hal was gone, who ought by all rights to have
succeeded his invalid brother. It was true that the invalid brother, who
had seen the end of two vigorous men, might also see out Phil. But that
would make little difference in the position, unless indeed by modifying
Elinor's feelings and removing her reluctance to make her boy known.
John shook his head as he went on with his thoughts, and decided within
himself that this was the very reason why Phil Compton should survive
and become Lord St. Serf, and make the imbroglio worse, if worse were
possible. It had not required this to make it a hideous imbroglio, the
most foolish and wanton that ever a woman made. He wondered at himself
when he thought of it how he had ever consented to it, ever permitted
such a state of affairs; and yet what could he have done? He had no
right to interfere even in the way of advice, which he had given until
everybody was sick of him and his counsels. He could not have betrayed
his cousin. To tell her that she was conducting her affairs very
foolishly, l