like your
pluck. But you will have to change it now. It was indecent of me to have
myself announced like that and poor old St. Serf not in his grave yet.
But I daresay you didn't pay any attention. You are Lady St. Serf
now, my dear. You don't mind, I know, but it's a change not without
importance. Well, who is that fellow behind there, standing in the
window? I think you ought to present him to me. Or I'll present him to
you instead. I saw him in the theatre, by Jove! with that fellow Tatham,
that cousin John of yours that I never could bear, smirking and smiling
at him as if it were _his_ son! but _I_ saw the boy then for the first
time. Nell, I tell you there are some things in which you have taken it
well out of me----"

"Mr. Compton," she said, labouring to speak. "Lord St. Serf. Oh, Phil,
Phil!----"

"Ah," he said, with a start, "do you remember at last? the garden at
that poky old cottage with all the flowers, and the days when you looked
out for wild Phil Compton that all the world warned you against? And
here I am an old fogey, without either wife or child, and Tatham taking
my boy about and Nell never looking me in the face."

Philip, at the window looking out at nothing through the
hideous-coloured glass, had heard every word, with wonder, with horror,
with consternation, with dreadful disappointment and sinking of the
heart. For indeed he had a high ideal of a father, the highest, such as
fatherless boys form in their ignorance. And every word made it more
sure that this was his father, this man who had so caught his eyes and
filled him with such a fever of interest. But to hear Phil Compton talk
had brought the boy's soaring imagination down, down to the dust. He had
not been prepared for anything like this. Some tragic rending asunder he
could have believed in, some wild and strange mystery. But this man of
careless speech, of chaff and slang, so little noble, so little serious,
so far from tragic! The disappointment had been too sudden and dreadful
to leave him with any ears for those tones that went to his mother's
heart. He had no pity or sense of the pathos that was in them. He stood
in his young absolutism disgusted, miserable. This man his father!--this
man! so talking, so thinking. Young Philip stood with his back to the
group, more miserable than words could say. He heard some movement
behind, but he was too sick of heart to think what it was, until suddenly
he felt a hand on his shoulder, and