The whole countenance and appearance of him whom we have called the Earl of Byerdale became like a withered flower. The colour forsook his cheeks and his lips; he grew pale, he grew livid; his proud head sunk, his knees bent, he trembled in every limb; and when Green, at length, pushed him from him, saying in a loud tone and with a stern brow, "Get thee from me, Harry Sherbrooke!" he sank into a chair, unable to speak, or move, or support himself.
In the meantime, his son had cast his eyes upon the ground, and remained looking downwards with a look of pain, but not surprise; while treading close upon the steps of Colonel Green appeared Wilton Brown with the Lady Helen Oswald clinging to rather than leaning on his arm, and the Earl of Sunbury on her right hand.
Those who were most surprised in the room were certainly the Duke and Lady Laura, for they had been suddenly made witnesses to a strange scene without having any key to the feelings, the motives, or the actions of the performers therein; and the Duke gazed with quite sufficient wonder upon all he saw, to drown and overcome all feelings of anger at beholding Wilton so unexpectedly in the house of the Earl of Sunbury.
For a moment or two after the stern gesture of Green, there was silence, as if every one else were too much afraid or too much surprised to speak; and he also continued for a short space gazing sternly upon the man before him, as if his mind laboured with all that he had to say. It was not, however, to the person whom his presence seemed entirely to have blasted, that he next addressed himself.
"My Lord of Sunbury," he said, "you see this man before me, and you also mark how terrible to him is this sudden meeting with one whom he has deemed long dead. When last we met, I left him on the shores of Ireland after the battle of the Boyne, in which I took part and he did not. The ship in which I was supposed to have sailed was wrecked at sea, and every soul therein perished. But I had marked this man's eagerness to make me quit my native land, in which I had great duties to perform, and I never went to the vessel, in which if I had gone, I should have met a watery grave. During the time that has since passed, he has enjoyed wealth that belonged not to him, a title to which he had no claim. He has raised himself to power and to station, and he has abused his power and disgraced his station, till his King is weary of him, and his country can endure him no longer. In the meanwhile, I have waited my time; I have watched all his movements; I have heard of all the inquiries he has set on foot to prove my death, and all the investigations he instituted, when he found that the boy who was with me had been set on shore again. I have given him full scope and licence to act as he chose; but I have come at length, to wrest from him that which is not his, and to strip him of a rank to which he has no claim.—Have you anything to say, Harry Sherbrooke?" he continued, fixing his eye upon him. "Have you anything to say against that which I advance?"
While he had been speaking, the other had evidently been making a struggle to resume his composure and command over himself, and he now gazed upon him with a fierce and vindictive look, but without attempting to rise.
"I will not deny, Lennard Sherbrooke," he replied, "that I know you; I will not even deny that I know you to be Earl of Byerdale. But I know you also to be a proclaimed traitor and outlaw, having borne arms against the lawful sovereign of these realms, subjected by just decree to forfeiture and attainder; and I call upon every one here present to aid me in arresting you, and you to surrender yourself, to take your trial according to law!" "Weak man, give over!" replied the Colonel. "All your schemes are frustrated, all your base designs are vain. You writhe under my heel, like a crushed adder, but, serpent, I tell you, you bite upon a file. First, for myself, I am not a proclaimed traitor; but, pleading the King's full pardon for everything in which I may have offended, I claim all that is mine own, my rights, my privileges, my long forgotten name, even to the small pittance of inheritance, which, in your vast accessions of property, you did not even scruple to grasp at, and which has certainly mightily recovered itself under your careful and parsimonious hand. But, nevertheless, though I claim all that is my own, I claim neither the title nor the estates of Byerdale. Wilton, my boy, stand forward, and let any one who ever saw or knew your gallant and noble father, and your mother, who is now a saint in heaven, say if they do not see in you a blended image of the two."
"He was his natural child! he was his natural child!" cried Henry
Sherbrooke, starting up from his seat. "I ascertained it beyond a doubt!
I have proof! I have proof!"
"Again, false man?—Again?" said Lennard Sherbrooke.
"Cannot shame keep you silent? You have no proof! You can have no proof!—You found no proof of the marriage—granted; because care was taken that you should not. But I have proof sufficient, sir. This lady, whom I must call in this land Mistress Helen Oswald, though the late King bestowed upon her father and herself a rank higher than that to which she now lays claim, was present at the private marriage of her sister to my brother, by a Protestant clergyman, before Sir Harry Oswald ever quitted England. There is also the woman servant, who was present likewise, still living and ready to be produced; and if more be wanting, here is the certificate of the clergyman himself, signed in due form, together with my brother's solemn attestation of his marriage, given before he went to the fatal battle in which he fell. To possess yourself of these papers, of the existence of which you yourself must have entertained some suspicions, you used unjustifiable arts towards this noble Earl of Sunbury, which were specious enough even to deceive his wisdom; but I obtained information of the facts, and frustrated your devices."