ur family secret is an attribute of a fine old race. The
Pelopidae, for instance--in their case it was not a single skeleton, but
a whole charnel house. I don't think your skeleton need trouble you,
Maulevrier. It belongs to the remote past.'

'Those things never belong to the past,' said the young man. 'If it were
any other kind of taint--profligacy--madness, even--the story of a duel
that went very near murder--a runaway wife--a rebellious son--a cruel
husband. I have heard such stories hinted at in the records of families.
But our story means disgrace. I seldom see strangers putting their heads
together at the club without fancying they are telling each other about
my grandfather, and pointing me out as the grandson and heir of a
thief.'

'Why use unduly hard words?'

'Why should I stoop to sophistication, with you, my friend. Dishonesty
is dishonesty all the world over; and to plunder Rajahs on a large scale
is no less vile than to pick a pocket on Ludgate Hill.'

'Nothing was ever proved against your grandfather.'

'No, he died in the nick of time, and the inquiry was squashed, thanks
to the Angersthorpe interest, and my grandmother's cleverness. But if he
had lived a few weeks longer England would have rung with the story of
his profligacy and dishonour. Some people say he committed suicide in
order to escape the inquiry; but I have heard my mother emphatically
deny this. My father told her that he had often talked with the people
who kept the little inn where his father died, and they were clear
enough in their assertion that the death was a natural death--the sudden
collapse of an exhausted constitution.'

'Was it on account of this scandal that your father spent the best part
of his life away from England?' Hammond asked, feeling that it was a
relief to Maulevrier to talk about this secret burden of his.

The young Earl was light-hearted and frivolous by nature, yet even he
had his graver moments; and upon this subject of the old Maulevrier
scandal he was peculiarly sensitive, perhaps all the more so because his
grandmother had never allowed him to speak to her about it, had never
satisfied his curiosity upon any details of that painful story.

'I have very little doubt it was so--though I wasn't old enough when he
died to hear as much from his own lips. My father went straight from the
University to Vienna, where he began his career in the diplomatic
service, and where he soon afterwards married a dowe