“Thank you, sir, and you shall never have reason—”
“Don’t interrupt me, young man. What reason can I have to judge of the future, but from the past? I am not an idiot to be bothered with fair words.”
“Oh! sir, can you suspect?”
“I suspect nothing, Harry Ormond: I am, I thank my God, above suspicion. Listen to me. You know—whether I ever told it you before or not, I can’t remember—but whether or not, you know as well as if you were withinside of me—that in my heart’s core there’s not a man alive I should have preferred for my son-in-law to the man I once thought Harry Ormond, without a penny—”
“Once thought!”
“Interrupt me again, and I’ll lave you, sir. In confidence between ourselves, thinking as once I did, that I might depend on your friendship and discretion, equally with your honour, I confessed, I repented a rash promise, and let you see my regret deep enough that my son-in-law will never be what Dora deserves—I said, or let you see as much, no matter which; I am no equivocator, nor do I now unsay or retract a word. You have my secret; but remember when first I had the folly to tell it you, same time I warned you—I warned you, Harry, like the moth from the candle—I warned you in vain. In another tone I warn you now, young man, for the last time—I tell you my promise to me is sacred—she is as good as married to White Connal—fairly tied up neck and heels—and so am I, to all intents and purposes; and if I thought it were possible you could consider her, or make her by any means consider herself, in any other light, I will tell you what I would do—I would shoot myself; for one of us must fall, and I wouldn’t choose it should be you, Harry. That’s all.”
“Oh! hear me, sir,” cried Harry, seizing his arm as he turned away, “kill me if you will, but hear me—I give you my word you are from beginning to end mistaken. I cannot tell you the whole—but this much believe, Dora was not the cause of quarrel.”
“Then there was a quarrel. Oh, for shame! for shame!—you are not used to falsehood enough yet—you can’t carry it through—why did you attempt it with me?”
“Sir, though I can’t tell you the truth, the foolish truth, I tell you no falsehood. Dora’s name, a thought of Dora, never came in question between Mr. Connal and me, upon my honour.”
“Your honour!” repeated Cornelius, with a severe look—severe more in its sorrow than its anger. “O Harry Ormond! what signifies whether the name was mentioned? You know she was the thing—the cause of offence. Stop! I charge you—equivocate no more. If a lie’s beneath a gentleman, an equivocation is doubly beneath a man.”