The letter ran thus:
"MY DEAR FATHER,—Almost as soon as you receive this, I shall be with you. Ill as I am, I can have no peace till I see and consult you. The most startling—the most painful intelligence has just been conveyed to me. It is of a nature not to bear any but personal communication.
"Your affectionate son,
"ARTHUR BEAUFORT.
"Boulogne.
"P.S.—This will go by the same packet-boat that I shall take myself, and can only reach you a few hours before I arrive."
Mr. Beaufort's trembling hand dropped the letter—he grasped the elbow of the chair to save himself from falling. It was clear!—the same visitor who had persecuted himself had now sought his son! He grew sick, his son might have heard the witness—might be convinced. His son himself now appeared to him as a foe—for the father dreaded the son's honour! He glanced furtively round the table, till his eye rested on Vaudemont, and his terror was redoubled, for Vaudemont's face, usually so calm, was animated to an extraordinary degree, as he now lifted it from the letter he had just read. Their eyes met. Robert Beaufort looked on him as a prisoner at the bar looks on the accusing counsel, when he first commences his harangue.
"Mr. Beaufort," said the guest, "the letter you have given me summons me to London on important business, and immediately. Suffer me to send for horses at your earliest convenience."
"What's the matter?" said the feeble and seldom heard voice of Mrs.
Beaufort. "What's the matter, Robert?—is Arthur coming?"
"He comes to-day," said the father, with a deep sigh; and Vaudemont, at that moment rising from his half-finished breakfast, with a bow that included the group, and with a glance that lingered on Camilla, as she bent over her own unopened letter (a letter from Winandermere, the seal of which she dared not yet to break), quitted the room. He hastened to his own chamber, and strode to and fro with a stately step—the step of the Master—then, taking forth the letter, he again hurried over its contents. They ran thus:
DEAR, Sir,—At last the missing witness has applied to me. He proves to be, as you conjectured, the same person who had called on Mr. Roger Morton; but as there are some circumstances on which I wish to take your instructions without a moment's delay, I shall leave London by the mail, and wait you at D—— (at the principal inn), which is, I understand, twenty miles on the high road from Beaufort Court.
"I have the honor to be, sir,
"Yours, &c.,
"JOHN BARLOW.