before me might also do were there the like necessity. The necessity
of such reference, in my own case, does not make it less hard for me."
Here, Sir Humphrey pauses. When he speaks again he is something
straighter and firmer than before. "But as at this season the Church
and our good friend the parson would teach us all to remember each
other and to help those we can help, I am about to speak. You have
heard, all of you, how twenty years ago I sent my two eldest sons
out of the house. You have heard, all of you, that they were foolish,
and that I was hard, something about a girl and cut off with a
shilling, I suppose. Well, to-night you shall hear the true story. I
do not think even Lady Desart knows it. She was not their mother, but,
as you know, my adored and adoring second wife. I do not know if
many of you remember my boys. I can see Humphrey now--a man does not
easily forget his first-born, and Hugh was no less dear. My dear
friends, if I drove the lads from my house twenty years ago to-night,
I did it in obedience to the rules of my own conscience and with
regard to the laws of nature, which I should have put before my
conscience, as I have far greater respect for them. I did it, as we
so often futilely say, for the best. But how often, oh, my dear
friends, how often since I have thought that I may have made a
terrible mistake."

"They were, Hugh and Humphrey, both madly in love with the same girl.
She was no pauper, as you may have been led to believe, but the Lady
Barbara Hastings. Her name is familiar to you. She was beautiful and
talented, never married, and you may remember that about a month ago
she died at the house of friends in London. I knew her, fortunately
or unfortunately, however, moving in society as the adopted daughter
of a refined gentlewoman, to be the child of a lunatic mother and a
father who drank his life away in a Continental retreat. Knowing this