mill. His University friends found him out, made my shop a lounge,

borrowed my money, and paid me a protective rate of interest. We had our quarrels—not violent and noisy, like the quarrels in which women are concerned, but perhaps all the more lasting in their effect. Where he went at night I knew not, until going into his room very early one morning to wake him—there was to be a great picture-sale twenty miles from London that day, and I wanted him to attend it—I saw some gold and notes scattered on the table by his bedside. From that moment I knew the worst of his vices. He was a gambler. Where he played or with whom I never knew. I never played the spy upon him, or attempted to get at his secrets in any underhand manner. One day I taxed him with this vice. He shrugged his shoulders, and affected supreme candour. “I play a little sometimes,” he said—“games of skill, not chance. It is impossible to keep such company as I keep and not take an occasional hand at whist or écarté. And you ought not to forget that my friends have been profitable to you.” A year after this I had occasion to sell a portion of my stock at Christie’s, in order to obtain ready money to purchase the lease of premises adjoining my own—premises which would enable me to enlarge my art gallery. The things were sold, and, a few days afterwards, settled for. I brought home the money—between five and six hundred pounds—locked it in my safe, impregnable even to my junior partner, and sat down to dinner with the key in my pocket, and, as I believed, my money secure.’

Again there was a pause, painful recollections contracting the deeply-lined brow, gloomy thoughts clouding the eyes.

‘Well, I had come home late; the child was in bed, and my son and I dined together by the fire in the little parlour behind the shop—my wife’s fine drawing-room had been absorbed long ago into the art gallery. Never had Ferdinand been so genial or so gay. He was full of talk about the extension of our premises; discussed our chances of success like a thorough man of business. We had a bottle of good old burgundy in honour of our brilliant prospects. I did not drink more than usual; yet half an hour after dinner I was in the deepest sleep that ever stole my senses, and reduced me to the condition of a lifeless log. In a word, the wine had been drugged, and by the hand of my son. When I awoke it was long after midnight, the hearth was black and cold, the candles had burned down to the sockets. I woke with a violent headache, and that nausea which is the after-taste of opium or morphine. I sat for some minutes shivering, and wondering what was the matter with me. Almost mechanically I felt in my pocket for the key of the safe. Yes, there it lay, snug enough. I staggered up to bed, surprised at the unusual effect of a couple of glasses of burgundy, and was so ill next morning that my old housekeeper sent for the nearest apothecary. He felt my pulse, looked at my eyes, and asked if I had taken an opiate. Then it flashed upon me in a moment that I had been drugged. The instant the apothecary left me I got out of bed, dragged on my clothes, and went down to examine my safe. The money was gone. Ferdinand knew when I was to receive the cash, and knew my habits well enough to know where I should put it, careful as I had been not to let him see me dispose of it. I had been robbed—dexterously—by my own son.’

‘Scoundrel!’ muttered Lucius.

‘Yes. I might have stomached the theft; I couldn’t forgive the opiate. That stung me to the quick. A man who would do that would poison me, I thought; and I plucked my only son out of my heart, as you drag up a foul weed whose roots have gone deep and have a tough hold in a clay soil. It was a wrench, and left a feeling of soreness for after years; but I think my love for him died in that hour. Could one love so paltry a villain? I made no attempt to pursue him, nor to regain my money. One can hardly deliver one’s own flesh and blood to the tender mercies of the criminal code.’

‘You never told his daughter?’

‘No; I was not cruel enough for that. I did my best to impress upon her mind that he was unworthy of affection or regret, without stating the nature of his offence. Unhappily, with her romantic temperament, to be unfortunate is to be worthy of compassion. I know that she has wept for him and regretted him, and even set up his image in her heart, in spite of me.’

‘How much do you know of your son’s fate?’

‘Almost nothing. By mere accident I heard that he went to America within a month of the day on which he robbed me. More than that I never heard.’

‘Do you remember the name of the ship—or steamer—in which he went?’

‘That’s a curious question; however, I don’t mind answering it. He went in a Spanish sailing-ship, El Dorado, bound for Rio.’

This was all—a poor clue wherewith to discover the whereabouts of a man who had been missing twelve years.