Robert Beaufort glanced over the paper held out to him—dropped it on the floor—and staggered to a seat. Lilburne coolly replaced the document in the bureau, and, limping to his brother-in-law, said with a smile,—
“But the paper is in my possession—I will not destroy it. No; I have no right to destroy it. Besides, it would be a crime; but if I give it to you, you can do with it as you please.”
“O Lilburne, spare me—spare me. I meant to be an honest man. I—I—” And Robert Beaufort sobbed. Lilburne looked at him in scornful surprise.
“Do not fear that I shall ever think worse of you; and who else will know it? Do not fear me. No;—I, too, have reasons to hate and to fear this Philip Vaudemont; for Vaudemont shall be his name, and not Beaufort, in spite of fifty such scraps of paper! He has known a man—my worst foe—he has secrets of mine—of my past—perhaps of my present: but I laugh at his knowledge while he is a wandering adventurer;—I should tremble at that knowledge if he could thunder it out to the world as Philip Beaufort of Beaufort Court! There, I am candid with you. Now hear my plan. Prove to Arthur that his visitor is a convicted felon, by sending the officers of justice after him instantly—off with him again to the Settlements. Defy a single witness—entrap Vaudemont back to France and prove him (I think I will prove him such—I think so—with a little money and a little pains)—prove him the accomplice of William Gawtrey, a coiner and a murderer! Pshaw! take yon paper. Do with it as you will—keep it—give it to Arthur—let Philip Vaudemont have it, and Philip Vaudemont will be rich and great, the happiest man between earth and paradise! On the other hand, come and tell me that you have lost it, or that I never gave you such a paper, or that no such paper ever existed; and Philip Vaudemont may live a pauper, and die, perhaps, a slave at the galleys! Lose it, I say,—lose it,—and advise with me upon the rest.”
Horror-struck, bewildered, the weak man gazed upon the calm face of the Master-villain, as the scholar of the old fables might have gazed on the fiend who put before him worldly prosperity here and the loss of his soul hereafter. He had never hitherto regarded Lilburne in his true light. He was appalled by the black heart that lay bare before him.
“I can’t destroy it—I can’t,” he faltered out; “and if I did, out of love for Arthur,—don’t talk of galleys,—of vengeance—I—I—”
“The arrears of the rents you have enjoyed will send you to gaol for your life. No, no; don’t destroy the paper.”
Beaufort rose with a desperate effort; he moved to the bureau. Fanny’s heart was on her lips;—of this long conference she had understood only the one broad point on which Lilburne had insisted with an emphasis that could have enlightened an infant; and he looked on Beaufort as an infant then—On that paper rested Philip Vaudemont’s fate—happiness if saved, ruin if destroyed; Philip—her Philip! And Philip himself had said to her once—when had she ever forgotten his words? and now how those words flashed across her—Philip himself had said to her once, “Upon a scrap of paper, if I could but find it, may depend my whole fortune, my whole happiness, all that I care for in life.”—Robert Beaufort moved to the bureau—he seized the document—he looked over it again, hurriedly, and ere Lilburne, who by no means wished to have it destroyed in his own presence, was aware of his intention—he hastened with tottering steps to the hearth-averted his eyes, and cast it on the fire. At that instant something white—he scarce knew what, it seemed to him as a spirit, as a ghost—darted by him, and snatched the paper, as yet uninjured, from the embers! There was a pause for the hundredth part of a moment:—a gurgling sound of astonishment and horror from Beaufort—an exclamation from Lilburne—a laugh from Fanny, as, her eyes flashing light, with a proud dilation of stature, with the paper clasped tightly to her bosom, she turned her looks of triumph from one to the other. The two men were both too amazed, at the instant, for rapid measures. But Lilburne, recovering himself first, hastened to her; she eluded his grasp—she made towards the door to the passage; when Lilburne, seriously alarmed, seized her arm;—
“Foolish child!—give me that paper!”
“Never but with my life!” And Fanny’s cry for help rang through the house.