The loss of my dear boy pressed not only on my heart as a father, but injured my individual interests in a very considerable degree; for as there was now no direct heir to the estate, and Lady Lyndon was of a weak health, and supposed to be quite unlikely to leave a family, the next in succession-that detestable family of Tiptoff—­ began to exert themselves in a hundred ways to annoy me, and were at the head of the party of enemies who were raising reports to my discredit.  They interposed between me and my management of the property in a hundred different ways; making an outcry if I cut a stick, sunk a shaft, sold a picture, or sent a few ounces of plate to be remodelled.  They harassed me with ceaseless lawsuits, got injunctions from Chancery, hampered my agents in the execution of their work; so much so that you would have fancied my own was not my own, but theirs, to do as they liked with.  What is worse, as I have reason to believe, they had tamperings and dealings with my own domestics under my own roof; for I could not have a word with Lady Lyndon but it somehow got abroad, and I could not be drunk with my chaplain and friends but some sanctified rascals would get hold of the news, and reckon up all the bottles I drank and all the oaths I swore.  That these were not few, I acknowledge.  I am of the old school; was always a free liver and speaker; and, at least, if I did and said what I liked, was not so bad as many a canting scoundrel I know of who covers his foibles and sins, unsuspected, with a mask of holiness.  As I am making a clean breast of it, and am no hypocrite, I may as well confess now that I endeavoured to ward off the devices of my enemies by an artifice which was not, perhaps, strictly justifiable.  Everything depended on my having an heir to the estate; for if Lady Lyndon, who was of weakly health, had died, the next day I was a beggar:  all my sacrifices of money, &c., on the estate would not have been held in a farthing’s account; all the debts would have been left on my shoulders; and my enemies would have triumphed over me:  which, to a man of my honourable spirit, was ’the unkindest cut of all,’ as some poet says.

I confess, then, it was my wish to supplant these scoundrels; and, as I could not do so without an heir to my property, I determined to find one.  If I had him near at hand, and of my own blood too, though with the bar sinister, is not here the question.  It was then I found out the rascally machinations of my enemies; for, having broached this plan to Lady Lyndon, whom I made to be, outwardly at least, the most obedient of wives,—­although I never let a letter from her or to her go or arrive without my inspection,—­although I allowed her to see none but those persons who I thought, in her delicate health, would be fitting society for her; yet the infernal Tiptoffs got wind of my scheme, protested instantly against it, not only by letter, but in the shameful libellous public prints, and held