Mr. Havisham turned from the sofa, still rubbing his chin.
“It was bad news,” he answered, “distressing news, my lord—the worst of news. I am sorry to be the bearer of it.”
The Earl had been uneasy for some time during the evening, as he glanced at Mr. Havisham, and when he was uneasy he was always ill-tempered.
“Why do you look so at the boy!” he exclaimed irritably. “You have been looking at him all the evening as if—. What has your news to do with Lord Fauntleroy?”
“My lord,” said Mr. Havisham, “I will waste no words. My news has everything to do with Lord Fauntleroy. And if we are to believe it—it is not Lord Fauntleroy who lies sleeping before us, but only the son of Captain Errol. And the present Lord Fauntleroy is the son of your son Bevis, and is at this moment in a lodging-house in London.”
The Earl [clutched] the arms of his chair with both his hands until the veins stood out upon them; the veins stood out on his forehead too; his fierce old face was almost livid.
“What do you mean!” he cried out. “You are mad! Whose lie is this?”
“If it is a lie,” answered Mr. Havisham, “it is painfully like the truth. A woman came to my [chambers] this morning. She said your son Bevis married her six years ago in London. She showed me her marriage certificate. They quarrelled a year after the marriage, and he paid her to keep away from him. She has a son five years old. She is an American of the lower classes,—an ignorant person,—and until lately she did not fully understand what her son could claim. She consulted a lawyer, and found out that the boy was really Lord Fauntleroy and the heir to the earldom of Dorincourt; and she, of course, insists on his claims being acknowledged.”
The handsome, grim old face was ghastly. A bitter smile fixed itself upon it.
“I should refuse to believe a word of it,” he said, “if it were not such that it becomes quite possible in connection with the name of my son Bevis. It is quite like Bevis. He was always a disgrace to us. The woman is an ignorant, vulgar person, you say?”