in that hour that Justin should
be as a son to him. He would do her will, and he set upon it a more
definite meaning than she intended. Rotherby should remain in ignorance
of his son's existence until such season as should make the knowledge a
very anguish to him. He would rear Justin in bitter hatred of the foul
villain who had been his father; and with the boy's help, when the time
should be ripe, he would lay my Lord Rotherby in ruins. Thus should my
lord's sin come to find him out.

This Everard had sworn, and this he had done. He had told Justin the
story almost as soon as Justin was of an age to understand it. He had
repeated it at very frequent intervals, and as the lad grew, Everard
watched in him--fostering it by every means in his power--the growth of
his execration for the author of his days, and of his reverence for the
sweet, departed saint that had been his mother.

For the rest, he had lavished Justin nobly for his mother's sake. The
repurchased estates of Maligny, with their handsome rent roll, remained
Justin's own, administered by Sir Richard during the lad's minority and
vastly enriched by the care of that administration. He had sent the
lad to Oxford, and afterwards--the more thoroughly to complete his
education--on a two years' tour of Europe; and on his return, a grown
and cultured man, he had attached him to the court in Rome of the
Pretender, whose agent he was himself in Paris.

He had done his duty by the boy as he understood his duty, always with
that grim purpose of revenge for his horizon. And the result had been a
stranger compound than even Everard knew, for all that he knew the
lad exceedingly well. For he had scarcely reckoned sufficiently upon
Justin's mixed nationality and the circumstance that in soul and mind
he was entirely his mother's child, with nothing--or an imperceptible
little--of his father. As his mother's nature had been, so was
Justin's--joyous. But Everard's training of him had suppressed all
inborn vivacity. The mirth and diablerie that were his birthright had
been overlaid with British phlegm, until in their stead, and through
the blend, a certain sardonic humor had developed, an ironical attitude
toward all things whether sacred or profane. This had been helped on
by culture, and--in a still greater measure--by the odd training in
worldliness which he had from Everard. His illusions were shattered ere
he had cut his wisdom teeth, thanks to the tutelage of Sir Richa