"A strange day," he thought, as with an abstracted air he
filled his glass, and sipping the wine, leant back in his
chair. "The son of Walter Gerard! A chartist delegate! The
best blood in England! What would I not be, were it mine.
"Those infernal papers! They made my fortune--and yet, I know
not how it is, the deed has cost me many a pang. Yet it
seemed innoxious! the old man dead--insolvent; myself
starving; his son ignorant of all, to whom too they could be
of no use, for it required thousands to work them, and even
with thousands they could only be worked by myself. Had I not
done it, I should ere this probably have been swept from the
surface of the earth, worn out with penury, disease, and
heart-ache. And now I am Baptist Hatton with a fortune almost
large enough to buy Mowbray itself, and with knowledge that
can make the proudest tremble.
"And for what object all this wealth and power? What memory
shall I leave? What family shall I found? Not a relative in
the world, except a solitary barbarian, from whom when, years
ago I visited him as a stranger I recoiled with unutterable
loathing.
"Ah! had I a child--a child like the beautiful daughter of
Gerard!"
And here mechanically Hatton filled his glass, and quaffed at
once a bumper.
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