St. Paul's, and not a suspicion came across me,--a word was sufficient
for you. And then to track this unfeeling old Joplin from place to place
till you find her absolutely a servant under the very roof of Mrs.
Braddell herself! Wonderful! Ah, boy, you will be an honour to the law
and to your country. And what a hard-hearted rascal you must think me to
have deserted you so long."

"My dear father," said John Ardworth, tenderly, "your love now
recompenses me for all. And ought I not rather to rejoice not to have
known the tale of a mother's shame until I could half forget it on a
father's breast?"

"John," said the elder Ardworth, with a choking voice, "I ought to wear
sackcloth all my life for having given you such a mother. When I think
what I have suffered from the habit of carelessness in those confounded
money-matters ('irritamenta malorum,' indeed!), I have only one
consolation,--that my patient, noble son is free from my vice. You would
not believe what a well-principled, honourable fellow I was at your age;
and yet, how truly I said to my poor friend William Mainwaring one day at
Laughton (I remember it now) 'Trust me with anything else but half-a-
guinea!' Why, sir, it was that fault that threw me into low company,--
that brought me in contact with my innkeeper's daughter at Limerick. I
fell in love, and I married (for, with all my faults, I was never a
seducer, John). I did not own my marriage; why should I?--my relatives
had cut me already. You were born, and, hunted poor devil as I was, I
forgot all by your cradle. Then, in the midst of my troubles, that
ungrateful woman deserted me; then I was led to believe that it was not
my own son whom I had kissed and blessed. Ah, but for that thought
should I have left you as I did? And even in infancy, you had the
features only of your mother. Then, when the death of the adulteress set