"So," said the Earl, "so! How nearly are you related to that family?--are you sure not in France?"
"Quite certain," replied Langford. "I have lived much in France, which may have given me some slight foreign accent; and as to my relationship to the Beaulieus, I can really hardly tell how near. I have only heard my mother say that she was nearly related to them."
"It cannot be! It cannot be!" said the Earl, drooping his head, and looking down upon the ground. "Is your mother living?"
A cloud came over Langford's brow: "She is not," he said.
The Earl again seemed interested. "How long has she been dead?" he asked.
"About two years," Langford replied, and thereupon the Earl once more shook his head, saying, "It cannot be. You are very like the late Marquis of Beaulieu," he added--"extremely like; and though circumstances have compelled me to discontinue my acquaintance with that family, I knew the Marquis once, and loved him well. I could have almost fancied that you were his son, and for his sake I cannot regard you with any other eyes than those of kindness. But yet what do I say?" he continued, while his brow again grew dark. "They tell me you have murdered my son, my only son. How strange, if the son of the man who had so nearly killed the father, should, five-and-twenty years after, have slain the son!"
"You forget, my lord, and you mistake altogether," replied Langford. "In the first place, I am not the son of the Marquis of Beaulieu; and, in the next place, I assure you most solemnly by all I hold dear--I pledge you my honour as a gentleman and a soldier, and my oath as a Christian and a man--that I have had no more share in this unfortunate event than you have."
"I would willingly believe you," answered the Earl, "most willingly, for yours is a countenance from which I have been accustomed to expect nothing but truth and honour. Yet why do these men accuse you? Why, if there be not proof as strong as truth itself why do they dare to bring an accusation against one of your high house? Oh, young man! young man! if you have slain him by fraud or villany, I will take vengeance of you by making you the public spectacle, and giving you up to the rope and scaffold: chains shall hang about you even in your death, and your bones shall whiten in the wind. But, if you have slain him foot to foot and hand to hand, you shall meet a father's vengeance in another way. Ay! old as I am, I will take your heart's blood, and you shall find that this arm has lost nothing of its skill and but little of its strength. You shall learn what a father's arm can do when heavy with the sword of the avenger!"
"Once more, my lord," replied Langford, calmly, "I assure you that I am perfectly innocent. I assure you that, neither fairly and openly, nor covertly and treacherously, have I had aught to do with your son's death. The sole ground for suspicion against me has been what I will not conceal from you, my lord, that, upon a slight quarrel between us, he drew his sword upon me, in the park of Sir Walter Herbert."
"Ay, Sir Walter Herbert!" exclaimed the peer, with a bitter sneer; "the pitiful old fool! He and his fair dainty daughter, Mistress Alice, they would none of my son, would they not? He shall pay for it in prison, and she shall see him rot before her eyes. Ay, now I guess how it all is. She has found a lover in fair Master Henry Langford, has she? and he has murdered a rival who might have proved troublesome. They shall answer for it, they shall answer for it! Ho! below there!" he continued, approaching the door. "Bring me up the papers which those two knights left!"