"The present moment is yours," answered the young citizen, gravely. "Who can say that, by the time you return, these lips may not be closed by a seal that no human hand can ever remove!"
"I trust not," replied the other; "I trust not; but if what you have to tell be really of importance, let me beseech you to speak it quickly."
"I will," replied Albert Maurice. "I have no right, nor any wish, to keep you in suspense. Are you aware that Adolphus, Duke of Gueldres, is dead?"
"Good God!" exclaimed the young cavalier. "They told me that he was quite well, and leading the forces of Ghent against Tournay. You have, indeed, ended my suspense somewhat abruptly."
"There is still more to come," said Albert Maurice, with a sort of reckless harshness, which was no part of his natural character; but which probably arose from the apathetic callousness of despair. "As you knew not that he was dead, you know not that this arm slew him."
"Ha!" cried the other, instinctively laying his hand upon his side, as if to grasp the hilt of his sword. "You--you! Did you shed my father's blood? Then, take heed to yourself. Call again for your jailers! Cast me back into the dungeon; for otherwise your blood must answer for that which you have spilt."
"Such threats," answered Albert Maurice, "are worse than vain, to one who loves life too little to care who takes it from him. Besides, they are prompted by a mere dream of the imagination, which I can dissolve by two or three words. You had never seen the Duke of Gueldres from your childhood; no sweet reciprocations of domestic love had bound your heart to his; you knew that he was vicious, criminal, unfeeling. Nay, frown not, sir, but hear me. You know all this; and yet, because you believe him to have been your father, you would slay any one that raised a hand against him."
Doubtless, there is inherent in human misery a desire of seeing others wretched when we are wretched ourselves; and the sort of painful playing with the feelings of the young cavalier, in which Albert Maurice indulged at a moment when he himself was plunged in the gloomiest despair, probably arose from some such cause. His own griefs, however, were too great to suffer his mind to dwell long upon anything without weariness; and he tired almost instantly of the topic.
"Too much of this!" he added, in the same abrupt tone. "Be your feelings on those points rational or not, no tie, human or divine, binds you to love or to avenge Adolphus, the bad Duke of Gueldres. Know, that at his instigation the man, whose corpse you saw but now, kindled the flames of Lindenmar, in which the infant heir of Hannut was supposed to have perished; and farther know, that in the act of death, the Duke of Gueldres confessed to me, that he himself carried away the infant, and reared him as his son upon the death of his own child. You are that boy; but you will want other proofs to establish the facts--there they are, in writing; and probably these papers which you saw me receive but now, may throw some farther light upon the matter. We have neither of us time to examine them more particularly at present. Take them with you, and claim your right of birth. Now follow me to the armory, for I hear your band passing onward towards the Alost gate to wait your coming. Are you strong enough to go?"
The young cavalier gazed for a moment in his face, bewildered by all he heard; but then replied, "I am ready! quite ready! For these papers I owe you a thousand thanks; but the tidings you have given confound me, and I have not words--"