’Including the paper on “Hamlet and Hamalet, and the wide region of Nowhere"?’

‘Including that and everything.’

‘Did you know him, Mr. Wilderspin?’

’Not in the flesh; in the spirit, who knows him so well?  Your mother I have had the pleasure of meeting at the house of Lord Sleaford, and indeed I have had the distinguished honour of painting her portrait; but the great author of The Veiled Queen—­the inspired designer of the vignette symbolical of the Renascence of Wonder in Art—­I never had the rapture of seeing.  This very day, the anniversary of his birth,’ he continued, ‘is a great day in the Aylwinian calendar.’

‘My father’s birthday?  Why, so it is!’

’Mr. Aylwin, is it possible that the anniversary of a day so momentous for the world is forgotten—­forgotten by the very issue of the great man’s loins?’

‘The fact is,’ said I, in some confusion, ’I have been living with the Gypsies, and, you see, Mr. Wilderspin, the passage of time—­’

‘The son of Philip Aylwin a Gypsy!’ murmured Wilderspin meditatively, and unconscious evidently that he was speaking aloud—­’a Gypsy!  Still it would surely be a mistake to suppose,’ he continued, perfectly oblivious now of my presence, ’that the vagaries of his son can really bring shame upon the head of the father.’

‘But, by God!’ I cried, ’it is no mistake that the vagaries of the father can bring shame and sorrow and misery upon the child.  I could name a couple of fathers—­sleeping very close to each other now—­whose vagaries—­’

My sudden anger was carrying me away; but I stopped, recollecting myself.

‘Doubtless,’ said Wilderspin, ’there are fathers and fathers.  The son of Philip Aylwin has assuredly a right to be critical in regard to all other fathers than his own.’

I looked in his face; the expression of solemn earnestness was quite unmistakable.

‘It is not you,’ I said, ’it is Heaven, or else it is the blind jester Circumstance, that is playing this joke upon me!’

‘To your honoured father,’ he continued, taking not the slightest notice of my interjection, ’I owe everything.  From his grave he supports my soul; from his grave he gives me ideas; from his grave he makes my fame.  How should I fail to honour his son, even though he—­’

Of course he was going to add—­’even though he be a vagabond associating with vagabonds,’—­but he left the sentence unfinished.

‘I confess, Mr. Wilderspin,’ said I, ’that you speak in such enigmas that it would be folly for me to attempt to answer you.’

‘I wish,’ said Wilderspin, ’that all enigmas were as soluble as this.  Let me ask you a question, sir.  When you stood before my picture, “Faith and Love,” in Bond Street, did you not perceive that both it and the predella were inspired entirely by your father’s great work, The Veiled Queen, or rather that they are mere pictorial renderings and illustrations of that grand effort of man’s soul in its loftiest development?’