“That is nothing,” said the Rector, with a motion of his hand. “Some time since I had the pleasure of saying to your friends in the Lodge that it would gratify me to be able to serve you. I do not desire to pry into your plans; but if I can help you in town, let me know without hesitation.”
“So far from prying,” said Louis, eagerly, interrupting him, “I desire nothing more than to explain them. All my life,” and once again the red blood rushed to the young man’s face,—“all my life I have occupied the most humiliating of positions—you know it. I am not a meek man by nature; what excuse I have had if a bitter pride has sometimes taken possession of me, you know——”
The Rector bowed gravely, but did not speak. Louis continued in haste, and with growing agitation, “I am not the son of Lord Winterbourne—I am not a disgraced offshoot of your family—I can speak to you without feeling shame and abasement in the very sound of your name. This has been my conviction since ever I was capable of knowing anything—but Heaven knows how subtly the snare was woven—it seemed impossible, until now when we have done it, to disengage our feet.”
“Have you made any discovery, then? What has happened?” said the Rector, roused into an eager curiosity. Here, at the very outset, lay Louis’s difficulty—and he had never perceived it before.
“No; I have made no discovery,” he said, with a momentary disconcertment. “I have only left the Hall—I have only told Lord Winterbourne what he knows well, and I have known long, that I am not his son.”
“Exactly—but how did you discover that?” said the Rector.
“I have discovered nothing—but I am as sure of it as that I breathe,” answered Louis.
The Rector looked at him—looked at a portrait which hung directly above Louis’s head upon the wall, smiled, and shook his head. “It is quite natural,” he said; “I can sympathise with any effort you make to gain a more honourable position, and to disown Lord Winterbourne—but it is vain, where there are pictures of the Riverses, to deny your connection with my family. George Rivers himself, my lord’s heir, the future head of the family, has not a tithe as much of the looks and bearing of the blood as you.”
Louis could not find a word to say in face of such an argument—he looked eagerly yet blankly into the face of the Rector—felt all his pulses throbbing with fiery impatience of the doubt thus cast upon him—yet knew nothing to advance against so subtle and unexpected a charge of kindred, and could only repeat, in a passionate undertone, “I am not Lord Winterbourne’s son.”
“I do not know,” said the Rector, “I have no information which is not common to all the neighbourhood—yet I beg you to guard against delusion. Lord Winterbourne brought you here while you were an infant—since then you have remained at the Hall—he has owned you, I suppose, as much as a man ever owns an illegitimate child. Pardon me, I am obliged to use the common words. Lord Winterbourne is not a man of extended benevolence, neither is he one to take upon himself the responsibility or blame of another. If you are not his son, why did he bring you here?”