endly. Yet he set me up as a Photographer fifteen years ago.
_Now_ he takes me down! But for him, I should never have married GINA,
who, you may remember, was a servant in your family once.

_Gregers_. What? my old College friend married fifteen years ago--and
to our GINA, of all people! If I had not been up at the works all
these years, I suppose I should have heard something of such an event.
But my father never mentioned it. Odd!

[_He ponders; Old EKDAL comes out through the green-baize
door, bowing, and begging pardon, carrying copying work. Old
WERLE says "Ugh" and "Puh" involuntarily. HIALMAR shrinks
back, and looks another way. A Chamberlain asks him
pleasantly if he knows that old man._

_Hialmar_. I--oh no. Not in the least. No relation!

_Gregers_ (_shocked_). What, HIALMAR, you, with your great soul, deny
your own father!

_Hialmar_ (_vehemently_). Of course--what else _can_ a Photographer
do with a disreputable old parent, who has been in a Penitentiary
for making a fraudulent map? I shall leave this splendid banquet. The
Chamberlains are not kind to me, and I feel the crushing hand of fate
on my head! [_Goes out hastily, feeling it._

_Mrs. Soerby_ (_archly_). Any Nobleman here say "Cold Punch"?

[_Every Nobleman says "Cold Punch," and follows her out in
search of it with enthusiasm. GREGERS approaches his father,
who wishes he would go._

_Gregers_. Father, a word with you in private. I loathe you. I am
nothing if not candid. Old EKDAL was your partner once, and it's my
firm belief you deserved a prison quite as much as he did. However,
you surely need not have married our GINA to my old friend HIALMAR.
You know very well she was no better than she should have been!

_Old Werle_. True--but then no more is Mrs. SOeRBY. And _I_ am going to
marry _her_--if you have no objection, that is.

_Gregers_. None in the world! How can I object to a stepmother who
is playing Blind Man's Buff at the present moment with the Norwegian
nobility? I am not so overstrained as all that. But really I can_not_
allow my old friend HIALMAR, with his great, confiding, childlike
mind, to remain in contented ignorance of GINA's past. No, I see my
mission in life at last! I shall take my hat, and inform him that his
home is built upon a lie. He will be _so_ much obliged to me! [_Takes
his hat, and goes out._

_Old Werle_. Ha!--I am a wealthy merchant, of dubious morals, and I
am about to