old you in this very room,
before you left England for an African tour in the Jingo. I then
revealed to you the secret of my life, the secret of the Duke's death.
Your horror when you heard how that most unhappy man compelled me to free
myself from his tyranny, by a method which his habits rendered only too
easy--in short, by a dose of cheap sherry, was deep and natural. Oh,
Percy, you did not kiss your mother before starting on your ill-omened
voyage. As soon as I heard of the wreck of the Jingo, and that you were
the only passenger drowned, I recognized an artifice, un vieux truc, by
which you hoped to escape from a mother of whom you were ashamed. You
had only pretended to be the victim of Ocean's rage! People who are
drowned in novels always _do_ reappear: and, Percy, your mother is an old
novel-reader! My agents have ever since been on your track, but it was
reserved for _me_ to discover the last of the Birkenheads in the
anonymous author of the 'Baronet's Wife.' That romance, in which you
have had the baseness to use your knowledge of a mother's guilt as a
motif in your twopenny plot, unveiled to me the secret of your hidden
existence. You must stop the story, or alter the following numbers; you
must give up your discreditable mode of life. Heavens, that a Birkenhead
should be a literary character! And you must resume your place in my
house and in society."

Here the Duchess of Stalybridge paused; she had quite recovered that
repose of manner and icy hauteur which, I understand, is the heritage of
the house of Birkenhead. For my part, I had almost lost the modest
confidence which is, I believe, hereditary in the family of Cobson. It
was a scene to make the boldest stand aghast. Here was an unknown lady
of the highest rank confessing a dreadful crime to a total stranger, and
recognizing in that stranger her son, and the heir to an enormous
property and a title as old--as old as British dukedoms, however old they
may be. Ouida would have said "heir to a title older than a thousand
centuries," but I doubt if the English duke is so ancient as that, or a
direct descendant of the Dukes of Edom mentioned in Holy Writ. I began
pouring out an incoherent flood of evidence to show that I was only
Thomas Cobson, and had never been any one else, but at that moment a gong
sounded, and a young lady entered the room. She also was dressed in
mourning, and the Duchess introduced her to me as my cousin, Miss
Birkenhe