“Do you not hear me?” cried Fred, piteously. “Father: I am your son.”
“No!” exclaimed Denville, in a low, hoarse whisper that was terrible in its intensity. “No: you are no son of mine. Hypocrite, villain—how dare you come here to insult me in my misery?”
“Insult you, father!” said Fred softly. “No, no, you do not know me. You do not understand what brings me here.”
“Not know?—not understand?” panted Denville, still in the same hoarse whisper, as if he dreaded to be heard. “I tell you I know all—I saw all. It was what I might have expected from your career.”
“Father!”
“Silence, dog! Oh, that I had strength! I feel that as I gave you the life you dishonour, I should be doing a duty to take you by the throat, and crush it out from such a wretch.”
“He’s mad,” thought the young man as he gazed on the wild distorted face.
“You thought that you were unseen—that your crime was known but to yourself; but such things cannot be hidden, such horrors are certain to be known. And now, wretch, hypocrite, coward, you have brought me to this, and you come with your pitiful canting words to ask me for pardon—me, the miserable old man whom you have dragged down even to this—a felon’s cell from which I must go to the scaffold.”
“No—no, father,” panted Fred. “Don’t—for God’s sake, don’t talk like this. I’ve been a great blackguard—a bad son; but surely you might forgive me—your own flesh and blood, when I come to you on my knees, in sorrow and repentance, to ask forgiveness, and to say let me try and help you in your distress. Come, father—my dear old father—give me your hand once more. Let the past be dead, for Claire’s sake, I ask you. I am her brother—your boy.”
“Silence! Wretch!” cried the old man. “Leave this place. Let me at least die in peace, and not be defiled by the presence of such a loathsome, cowardly thing as you.”