"You see, my lord," cried Harwold, sliding behind his father, "what we bring on ourselves by harboring these democratic foreigners! Sir," added he, addressing himself to Thaddeus, "your dangerous principles shall be communicated to Government. Such traitors ought to hanged."
Sobieski eyed the enraged little lord with contempt; and turning to the earl, who was again going to speak, he said, in an unaltered tone, "I cannot guess, Lord Tinemouth, what is the reason of this attack on me. I came hither by accident; I found the countess ill; and, from respect to her excellent qualities, I remained with her until her eyes were closed forever. She desired to see her daughter before she died,—what human heart could deny a mother such a request?—and Pembroke Somerset, her kinsman, undertook to bring Lady Albina to the Abbey.
"Pembroke Somerset!" echoed the earl. "A pretty guard for my daughter, truly! I have no doubt that he is just such a fellow as his father—just such a person as yourself! I am not to be imposed upon. I know Lady Tinemouth to have been a disgrace to me, and you to be that German adventurer on whose account I sent her from London."
Shocked at this calumny on the memory of a woman whose fame from any other mouth came as unsullied as purity itself, Thaddeus gazed with horror at the furious countenance of the man whom he believed to be his father. His heart swelled; but not deigning to reply to a charge as unmanly as it was false, he calmly took out of his pocket two letters which the countess had dictated to her husband and her son.
Lord Harwold tore his open, cast his eyes over the first words, then crumpling it in his hand, threw it from him, exclaiming, "I am not to be frightened either by her arts or the falsehoods of the fellows with whom she dishonored her name."
Thaddeus, no longer master of himself, sprang towards his unnatural son, and seized his arm with an iron grasp. "Lord Harwold!" cried he, in a dreadful voice, "were it not that I have some mercy on you for that parent's sake, to whom, like a parricide, you are giving a second death by such murderous slander, I would resent her wrongs at the hazard of your worthless life!"
"My lord! my lord!" cried the trembling Harwold, quaking under the gripe of Thaddeus, and shrinking from the terrible brightness of his eye,—"my lord! my lord, rescue me!"
The earl, almost suffocated with rage, called out, "Ruffian! let go my son!" and again raising his arm, aimed a blow at the head of Thaddeus, who, wrenching the stick out of the foaming lord's hand, snapped it in two, and threw the pieces out of the open window.
Lord Harwold took this opportunity to ring the bell violently, on which summons two of his servants entered the room.
"Now, you low-born, insolent scoundrel," cried the disarmed earl, stamping with his feet, and pointing to the men who stood at the door; "you shall be turned by the neck and heels out of this house. Richard, James, collar that fellow instantly."