"You should have consulted me," the count continued, speaking with great effort.
"True, and I meant to do so, had I not been prevented. But the transaction was simple enough. My estate is unmortgaged. I had given you a power of attorney, but I knew that it had not been used; you told me so yourself, scarcely an hour before I requested Mr. Emerson to make me this loan."
"No—no,—I did not say that;—you misunderstood me,—I did not say that,—I never said that! You only inferred it! I could not be answerable for your inferences," returned the count, in the tone of a man defending himself.
"Great heavens! What does this mean?" exclaimed Maurice "I cannot have misunderstood you? You cannot have used the power of attorney?"
The count was silent, but the shame and confusion depicted upon his countenance were a fearful answer.
It was some minutes before Maurice could rally sufficiently to take a clear view of his own position. His first impulse caused him to turn to his father in an excess of rage; but the broken, contrite, abject demeanor of the latter silenced the angry reproaches that were bursting from his son's lips.
The count was the first to break the silence.
He said, in a pleading, exculpatory tone,—
"There was no other way; matters had gone terribly wrong with me in Brittany; we were reduced to worse than poverty; I was frightfully entangled; nothing remained but a mortgage upon your property."
"What Mr. Emerson writes me in this letter is true, then?" was all Maurice could utter; but his tone pierced his father as deeply as the sharpest reproaches.