"Solomon would never heed it," exclaimed Harry, "nor even believe it if
I told him."
"He will believe me," said the other, composedly. "You must bring him here that I may tell him. Your Solomon must be a fool indeed not to hearken when a mother warns him against her own son. Mind, I do not blame my Richard, woman!" continued Mrs. Yorke, with sudden passion; "he has had provocation enough; it is but right to kill such vermin, and I could stand by and smile to see him do it. But they must be kept apart, I say—this man and Richard—lest a worse thing befall him than has happened already."
"Never to see him more!" moaned Harry, covering her face with her hands; "never to tell him I was not the wretch I seemed! only to fear him as an enemy to me and mine—"
"Ay, and to himself," interrupted the other, gravely. "If you would not inflict far more on him than you have done already; if you would not—as you will, if you neglect my warning—designedly bring him to a shameful death, as you have involuntarily doomed him to a shameful life, keep these two men apart. If you love this son of yours, remove him from the reach of mine."
"Great Heaven!" cried Harry, shuddering, "would he harm my boy—my innocent boy?"
"Ay, as he would set his heel upon his father—the viper and his brood. It is no idle menace he has breathed so cautiously that the whisper might well escape even another ear than mine, in every letter for these many years. He thirsts for liberty, not for his own sake, but for the slow-ripening vengeance it shall bear. He will have it, unless we save him from himself by saving them from him, as sure as yonder inky cloud will fall in storm. The thought of it was full grown in his mind when he wrote from Cross Key: 'They are dead to me, those three, at present,' and forbade me ever to mention them by name; and since then he has thought of nothing else. The day of retribution is about to dawn. I say again, beware of him."
"But he must be mad to cherish—"
"Perhaps he is," interrupted the old woman, coldly; "he will not be less dangerous on that account to those who made him mad."
There was a long silence. Then Harry, in submissive tones, inquired what
Mrs. Yorke would have her do.
"Bring your husband hither," returned she. "Take the rooms up stairs, and leave the task of telling him his peril to me: the sooner it is done the better. There is but a year at most—not much too long to sell his goods, and get him away across the world, erasing every footstep behind him. If he leave one—no matter how slight the clew—Richard will track him like a blood-hound."