ago, as you know, I married for the second time, and after a few years
of comparative happiness, found myself again a widower, my second wife
and her child dying within a few months of each other, when my boy was
only four years old.

"It is more than a year, now," continued Lord Ashiel, after a pause,
"since the girl Julia Romaninov came to my sister in London, with a
letter of introduction from our ambassador in Russia. It was not until my
sister invited her down to Scotland that I heard anything about her. Not,
in fact, till the day before she arrived, for I always tell my sister to
ask any girls she pleases to Inverashiel, and she very seldom bothers me
about it. You can imagine my feelings when I heard that Julia Romaninov
was expected within a few hours, and had indeed already started from
London. It was too late to try and stop her, and my first impulse was
flight. But on second thoughts I changed my mind, and stayed. Time had
dulled the feelings with which I had contemplated her share in the
tragedy that attended her birth, and I was not without a certain
curiosity to see this young creature for whose existence I was
responsible.

"I waited; she came; she stayed six weeks. You know the result. My sister
liked her; my nephews, my other guests, every one, except myself, was
charmed with her. And I, for some reason, could never stand the girl. I
told myself over and over again that it was mere prejudice; the remains
of the violent opposition I felt towards her when she was unknown to me;
a survival, unconscious and unwilling, of the hatred I had allowed myself
to nourish for the baby of a day old, which had made it impossible that
she and I should inhabit the same town when she was no more than a child
in pinafores. But I could not reason myself out of my dislike, and it
culminated a few weeks ago when I found that my sister was anxious to