“No, but I await it! Not in vain from the charnel have come to me the records I produce. And whom did fate select to discover the wrongs of the mother, whom appoint as her avenger? Your son,—your own son; your abandoned, nameless son!”
“Son! son!”
“Whom I delivered from famine, or from worse; and who, in return, has given into my hands the evidence which proclaims in you the perjured friend of Harley L’Estrange, and the fraudulent seducer, under mock marriage forms—worse than all franker sin—of Leonora Avenel.”
“It is false! false!” exclaimed Egerton, all his stateliness and all his energy restored to him. “I forbid you to speak thus to me. I forbid you by one word to sully the memory of my lawful wife!”
“Ah!” said Harley, startled. “Ah! false? prove that, and revenge is over! Thank Heaven!”
“Prove it! What so easy? And wherefore have I delayed the proof; wherefore concealed, but from tenderness to you,—dread, too—a selfish but human dread—to lose in you the sole esteem that I covet; the only mourner who would have shed one tear over the stone inscribed with some lying epitaph, in which it will suit a party purpose to proclaim the gratitude of a nation. Vain hope. I resign it! But you spoke of a son. Alas, alas! you are again deceived. I heard that I had a son,—years, long years ago. I sought him, and found a grave. But bless you, Harley, if you succoured one whom you even erringly suspect to be Leonora’s child!” He stretched forth his hands as he spoke.
“Of your son we will speak later,” said Harley, strangely softened. “But before I say more of him, let me ask you to explain; let me hope that you can extenuate what—”
“You are right,” interrupted Egerton, with eager quickness. “You would know from my own lips at last the plain tale of my own offence against you. It is due to both. Patiently hear me out.”
Then Egerton told all,—his own love for Nora, his struggles against what he felt as treason to his friend, his sudden discovery of Nora’s love for him; on that discovery, the overthrow of all his resolutions; their secret marriage, their separation; Nora’s flight, to which Audley still assigned but her groundless vague suspicion that their nuptials had not been legal, and her impatience of his own delay in acknowledging the rite.
His listener interrupted him here with a few questions, the clear and prompt replies to which enabled Harley to detect Levy’s plausible perversion of the facts; and he vaguely guessed the cause of the usurer’s falsehood, in the criminal passion which the ill-fated bride had inspired.