"His two sons abandoned the family name, and left the family residence.
They were, nevertheless, not unworthy representatives of their atrocious
father, as will presently appear.
"My uncle (a captain in the Army) was discovered at the hazard table,
playing with loaded dice. Before this abject scoundrel could be turned
out of his regiment, he was killed in a duel by one of his brother
officers whom he had cheated.
"My father, when he was little more than a lad, deserted a poor girl who
had trusted him under a promise of marriage. Friendless and hopeless, she
drowned herself and her child. His was the most infamous in the list of
the family crimes--and he escaped, without answering to a court of law or
a court of honor for what he had done.
"Some of us come of one breed, and some of another. There is the breed
from which I drew the breath of life. What do you think of me now?
VI
"I looked back over the past years of my existence, from the time of my
earliest recollections to the miserable day when I opened the sealed
packet.
"What wholesome influences had preserved me, so far, from moral
contamination by the vile blood that ran in my veins? There were two
answers to that question which, in some degree, quieted my mind. In the
first place, resembling my good mother physically, I might hope to have
resembled her morally. In the second place, the happy accidents of my
career had preserved me from temptation, at more than one critical period
of my life.
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