“Is the name of Rainford familiar to you?” asked the old woman, steadily watching the effect of her question.
“Madam,” exclaimed Charles, starting from his seat, and approaching Mrs. Fitzhardinge in a threatening manner, “would you taunt me with the infamy of my birth?—for I see that it is no secret to you! But imagine not—if such indeed be your idea—that I am unworthy the love of your daughter Perdita! You were about to marry her to an old nobleman: what if a young nobleman were to demand her hand?”
“A young nobleman!” ejaculated Mrs. Fitzhardinge, now surprised in her turn: for it must be remembered that all she knew concerning the present subject was gleaned from the musings of the old gipsy; and those musings had led her to believe that Charles was the nephew of Mr. Hatfield, alias Thomas Rainford.
“Yes—madam—a young nobleman!” he repeated, carried away by the excitement of feelings under which he laboured: for he fancied that the old lady had intended to reproach him—him, the son of the resuscitated highwayman—with having dared to love her daughter. “And now, perhaps, it is your turn to be surprised: for, as surely as you are seated there, I am not the plain, and humble, and obscure Charles Hatfield—but the Lord Viscount Marston, heir to the Earldom of Ellingham!”
Mrs. Fitzhardinge restrained her surprise with the utmost presence of mind—exerting indeed an extraordinary power of self-controul; and, surveying him with an unblushing effrontery, she said, “Well, my lord, your lordship is at length led to confess who you really are!”
“My lord”—“your lordship!”—Oh! how sweetly—how sweetly sounded those words on the ears of Charles Hatfield:—he forgot that he was the son of the resuscitated highwayman—he remembered not that his sire had passed through the ordeal of a scaffold: he heard only that he was saluted with a title of nobility; and already did it seem as if half his ambition were gratified.
“Madam,” he said, at length recovering his self-possession, and subduing as much as possible the wildness of that joy which had seized upon him, “then it appears you were acquainted with my right to a title of nobility?”
“I was,” she answered, with an air of the most perfect truthfulness: “and believing you to be ignorant of that fact, I was anxious to make the revelation to your lordship.”
“You are consequently acquainted with every thing that regards me?” continued Charles, not perceiving, in the still elated condition of his mind, that the question was foolish became it embraced a vague and undefined generality.
“Everything, my lord,” returned Mrs. Fitzhardinge, repeating the titular appellation, because in her latent shrewdness she saw full well the pleasure that its swelling sound afforded to the young man.