"Unheard!—zounds, no! If you have anything to say, speak truth, and shame the devil."
"I abet Frank's marriage! I sanction the post-obit! Oh!" cried Randal, clinging to a straw, "if Frank himself were but here!"
Harley's compassion vanished before this sustained hypocrisy.
"You wish for the presence of Frank Hazeldean? It is just." Harley opened the door of the inner room, and Frank appeared at the entrance.
"My son! my son!" cried the squire, rushing forward, and clasping Frank to his broad, fatherly breast.
This affecting incident gave a sudden change to the feelings of the audience, and for a moment Randal himself was forgotten. The young man seized that moment. Reprieved, as it were, from the glare of contemptuous, accusing eyes, slowly he crept to the door, slowly and noiselessly, as the viper, when it is wounded, drops its crest and glides writhing through the grass. Levy followed him to the threshold, and whispered in his ear,
"I could not help it,—you would have done the same by me. You see you have failed in everything; and when a man fails completely, we both agreed that we must give him up altogether."
Randal said not a word, and the baron marked his shadow fall on the broad stairs, stealing down, down, step after step, till it faded from the stones.
"But he was of some use," muttered Levy. "His treachery and his exposure will gall the childless Egerton. Some little revenge still!"
The count touched the arm of the musing usurer,