“Name her not with your lips—name her not!” cried Philip, growing livid with his emotions. “Talk not of the mercy—the forethought—a Beaufort could show to her and her offspring! I accept it not—I believe it not. Oh, yes! you follow me now with your false kindness; and why? Because your father—your vain, hollow, heartless father—”
“Hold!” said Beaufort, in a tone of such reproach, that it startled the wild heart on which it fell; “it is my father you speak of. Let the son respect the son.”
“No—no—no! I will respect none of your race. I tell you your father fears me. I tell you that my last words to him ring in his ears! My wrongs! Arthur Beaufort, when you are absent I seek to forget them; in your abhorred presence they revive—they—”
He stopped, almost choked with his passion; but continued instantly, with equal intensity of fervour:
“Were yon tree the gibbet, and to touch your hand could alone save me from it, I would scorn your aid. Aid! The very thought fires my blood and nerves my hand. Aid! Will a Beaufort give me back my birthright—restore my dead mother’s fair name? Minion!—sleek, dainty, luxurious minion!—out of my path! You have my fortune, my station, my rights; I have but poverty, and hate, and disdain. I swear, again and again, that you shall not purchase these from me.”
“But, Philip—Philip,” cried Beaufort, catching his arm; “hear one—hear one who stood by your—”
The sentence that would have saved the outcast from the demons that were darkening and swooping round his soul, died upon the young Protector’s lips. Blinded, maddened, excited, and exasperated, almost out of humanity itself, Philip fiercely—brutally—swung aside the enfeebled form that sought to cling to him, and Beaufort fell at his feet. Morton stopped—glared at him with clenched hands and a smiling lip, sprung over his prostrate form, and bounded to his home.
He slackened his pace as he neared the house, and looked behind; but Beaufort had not followed him. He entered the house, and found Sidney in the room, with a countenance so much more gay than that he had lately worn, that, absorbed as he was in thought and passion, it yet did not fail to strike him.
“What has pleased you, Sidney?” The child smiled.
“Ah! it is a secret—I was not to tell you. But I’m sure you are not the naughty boy he says you are.”