when the beloved mother died was in itself an offence.  But that that freedom, and peace, and prosperity, which were so dearly purchased by her death, should be risked afresh by him, was irritating to a degree.  He was frantic.  It was impossible to fail that very peremptory old gentleman, his father.  It was out of the question to allow his father-in-law to come to England.  He could not throw away all his prospects.  And the more he thought of it, the more certain it seemed that Jan’s existence would for ever tie him to Holland; that for his grandson’s sake the old man would investigate his affairs, and that the truth would come out sooner or later.  The very devil suggested to him that if the child had died with its mother he would have been quite free, and intercourse with Holland would have died away naturally.  He wished to forget.  To a nature of his type, when even such a love as he had been privileged to enjoy had become a memory involving pain, it was instinctively evaded like any other unpleasant thing.  He resolved, at last, to let nothing stand between him and reconciliation with his father.  Once more he must desperately mortgage the future for present emergencies.  He wrote to the old father-in-law to say that the child was dead.  He excused this to himself on the ground of Jan’s welfare.  If the truth became fully known, and his father threw him off, he would be a poor embarrassed man, and could do little for his child.  But with his father’s fortune, and, perhaps, the Scotch lady’s fortune, it would be in his power to give Jan a brilliant future, even if he never fully acknowledged him.  As yet he hardly recognized such an unnatural possibility.  He said to himself, that when he was free, all would be well, and the Dutch grandfather would forgive the lie in the joy of discovering that Jan was alive, and would be so well provided for.

Mr. Ford’s client was reconciled to his father.  He married Lady Adelaide, and announced the marriage to his father-in-law.  After which, his intercourse with Holland died out.

It was a curious result of a marriage so made that it was a very happy one.  Still more curious was the likeness, both physical and mental, between the second wife and the first.  Lady Adelaide was half Scotch and half English, a blonde of the most brilliant type, and of an intellectual order of beauty.  But fair women are common enough.  It was stranger still that the best affections of two women of so high a moral and intellectual standard should have been devoted to the same and to such a husband.  Not quite in vain.  Indeed, but for that grievous sin towards his eldest son, Mr. Ford’s client would probably have become an utterly different man.  But there is no rising far in the moral atmosphere with a wilful, unrepented sin as a clog.  It was a miserable result of the weakness of his character that he could not see that the very nobleness of Lady Adelaide’s should have encouraged him to confess to her what he dared not trust to his father’s imperious, petulant affection.  But he was afraid of her.  It had been the same with his first wife.  He had dreaded that she should discover his falsehoods far more than he had feared his father-in-law.  And years of happy companionship made it even less tolerable to him to think of lowering himself in Lady Adelaide’s regard.