rpation
of all social distinctions. Gentlemen, so called, were to him as
savages, which had to be cleared away in order that that perfection
might come at last which the course of nature was to produce in
obedience to the ordinances of the Creator. But he was a man who
reverenced all laws,--and a law, if recognised as a law, was a law
to him whether enforced by a penalty, or simply exigent of obedience
from his conscience. This girl had been thrown in his way, and he
had first pitied and then loved her from his childhood. She had been
injured by the fiendish malice of her own father,--and that father
had been an Earl. He had been strong in fighting for the rights
of the mother,--not because it had been the mother's right to be
a Countess,--but in opposition to the Earl. At first,--indeed
throughout all these years of conflict, except the last year,--there
had been a question, not of money, but of right. The wife was
entitled to due support,--to what measure of support Daniel had never
known or inquired; but the daughter had been entitled to nothing. The
Earl, had he made his will before he was mad,--or, more probably, had
he not destroyed, when mad, the will which he had before made,--might
and would have left the girl without a shilling. In those days, when
Daniel's love was slowly growing, when he wandered about with the
child among the rocks, when the growing girl had first learned to
swear to him that he should always be her friend of friends, when the
love of the boy had first become the passion of the man, there had
been no thought of money in it. Money! Had he not been well aware
from his earliest understanding of the need of money for all noble
purposes, that the earnings of his father, which should have made the
world to him a world of promise, were being lavished in the service
of these forlorn women? He had never complained. They were welcome to
it all. That young girl was all the world to him; and it was right
that all should be spent; as though she had been a sister, as though
she had already been his wife. There had been no plot then by which
he was to become rich on the Earl's wealth. Then had come the will,
and the young Earl's claims, and the general belief of men in all
quarters that the young Earl was to win everything. What was left of
the tailor's savings was still being spent on behalf of the Countess.
The first fee that ever found its way into the pocket of Serjeant
Bluestone had come from the dim