"Let it!" returned Louis, "since she has bereft me of my friend.—Wharton, we are no more to each other!"
"De Montemar?"
"In my extremest need, when I threw myself on your breast for counsel and for aid; when I believed you Heaven's delegated angel, to save my father and myself; you would have betrayed him to the dishonour of being bought by the guilt of his son; you would have betrayed me to hell's deepest perdition!"
As Louis spoke with the stern calmness of a divorced heart, Wharton became other than he had ever seen him. With the fires of resentment flashing from his resplendent eyes, he too collected the force of his soul in the mightiness of a last appeal. He spoke with rapidity for many minutes. He repeated, and redoubled his arguments; and then he added in a calmer voice:
"My heart is a man's heart, and therefore is sensible to this stroke from ungrateful friendship. But you now know that I can shame your superstition, by bearing insult upon insult, when my patience may recall you to yourself!"
"I am recalled to myself," returned Louis; "my superstition is, to depend on God alone for the preservation of my father. If he fall, God has his wise purpose in the judgement, and I shall find resignation. For you, Wharton—that I have loved so long and so steadily—there may be a pang there—when he I trusted above all men, has proved himself my direst enemy!"
"Your enemy, de Montemar? your direst enemy? The words have passed your lips, were engendered in your heart, and my ears have heard them! It is easier to hate, than to love; to discard a friend, than to accept a mistress; to plunge into the gulph of ruin, than to avoid it through a path of happiness! Madman! Did I not pity the folly I marvel at, I would rouse you by a tale. But no more. When you next hear of, or see Philip Wharton, you will understand the import of your own words.—You shall know what he is, when he proclaims himself the enemy of Ripperda and de Montemar!"
Louis stood immoveable, with his eyes on the ground, while Wharton vehemently uttered this denunciation. He remained some time, like a pillar transfixed in the earth, after the Duke had disappeared. The first thing that recalled him to motion, was the profound stillness around, after the sounds of that voice, which till now, was ever to him the music of heaven. The horrible conviction of all that had passed, pressed at once upon his soul; the dear and agonizing remembrance of how he had loved him; and raising his arms to the dark heavens with a fearful cry of expiring nature, he threw himself upon the ground.
The falling dew, and the howling wind raised him not from that bed of lonely despair. And when he did leave the dismal scene of this last act of his miseries, it was like the spectre of the man who had entered it.