's extraordinary behaviour. At a grand diplomatic dinner given
by his chief, he had started up and declared that a pate de foie gras
was poisoned. He went to a ball at the hotel of the Bavarian envoy,
the Count de Springbock-Hohenlaufen, with his head shaved and dressed
as a Capuchin friar. It was not a masked ball, as some folks wanted to
persuade you. It was something queer, people whispered. His
grandfather was so. It was in the family.

His wife and family returned to this country and took up their abode at
Gaunt House. Lord George gave up his post on the European continent,
and was gazetted to Brazil. But people knew better; he never returned
from that Brazil expedition--never died there--never lived there--never
was there at all. He was nowhere; he was gone out altogether.
"Brazil," said one gossip to another, with a grin--"Brazil is St.
John's Wood. Rio de Janeiro is a cottage surrounded by four walls, and
George Gaunt is accredited to a keeper, who has invested him with the
order of the Strait-Waistcoat." These are the kinds of epitaphs which
men pass over one another in Vanity Fair.

Twice or thrice in a week, in the earliest morning, the poor mother
went for her sins and saw the poor invalid. Sometimes he laughed at her
(and his laughter was more pitiful than to hear him cry); sometimes she
found the brilliant dandy diplomatist of the Congress of Vienna
dragging about a child's toy, or nursing the keeper's baby's doll.
Sometimes he knew her and Father Mole, her director and companion;
oftener he forgot her, as he had done wife, children, love, ambition,
vanity. But he remembered his dinner-hour, and used to cry if his
wine-and-water was not strong enough.

It was the mysterious taint of the blood; the poor mother had brought
it from her own ancient race. The evil had broken out once or twice in
the father's family, long before Lady Steyne's sins had begun, or her
fasts and tears and penances had been offered in their expiation. The
pride of the race was struck down as the first-born of Pharaoh. The
dark mark of fate and doom was on the threshold--the tall old
threshold surmounted by coronets and caned heraldry.

The absent lord's children meanwhile prattled and grew on quite
unconscious that the doom was over them too. First they talked of
their father and devised plans against his return. Then the name of
the living dead man was less frequently in their mouth--then not
mentioned at all. But