After all, then, there was nothing but plebeian blood in the veins
of the heir to his name and estates; he was not to be succeeded by a
noble-natured line. To be sure, Rupert was his son; but that glory
and halo he believed him to have inherited from the ages, outshining
that of his brother's children, had departed from Rupert's brow for
ever; he could no longer read history in the boy's face, and
centuries of domination in his eyes.
His manner towards his son grew colder and colder from that day
forward; and it was with bitterness of heart that he discerned the
characteristic features of the Petricks unfolding themselves by
degrees. Instead of the elegant knife-edged nose, so typical of the
Dukes of Southwesterland, there began to appear on his face the
broad nostril and hollow bridge of his grandfather Timothy. No
illustrious line of politicians was promised a continuator in that
graying blue eye, for it was acquiring the expression of the orb of
a particularly objectionable cousin of his own; and, instead of the
mouth-curves which had thrilled Parliamentary audiences in speeches
now bound in calf in every well-ordered library, there was the bull-
lip of that very uncle of his who had had the misfortune with the
signature of a gentleman's will, and had been transported for life
in consequence.
To think how he himself, too, had sinned in this same matter of a
will for this mere fleshly reproduction of a wretched old uncle
whose very name he wished to forget! The boy's Christian name,
even, was an imposture and an irony, for it implied hereditary force
and brilliancy to which he plainly would never attain.
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