“I have not wrote, my darling Betsy, this three weeks; but this is to give her a father’s blessing, and I shall come down pretty soon as quick as my note, and intend to see the ceremony, and my son-in-law. I shall put up at Bonner’s. I have had a pleasant autumn, and am staying here at an hotel where there is good company, and which is kep’ in good style. I don’t know whether I quite approve of your throwing over Mr. P. for Mr. F., and don’t think Foker’s such a pretty name, and from your account of him he seems a muff, and not a beauty. But he has got the rowdy, which is the thing. So no more, my dear little Betsy, till we meet, from your affectionate father, J. Amory Altamont.”
“Read it, Lady Clavering; it is too late to keep it from you now,” said poor Foker; and the distracted woman, having cast her eyes over it, again broke out into hysterical screams, and convulsively grasped her son.
“They have made an outcast of you, my boy,” she said. “They’ve dishonoured your old mother; but I’m innocent, Frank; before God, I’m innocent. I didn’t know this, Mr. Foker; indeed, indeed, I didn’t.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” said Foker, going up and kissing her hand.
“Generous, generous Harry!” cried out Blanche, in an ecstasy. But he withdrew his hand, which was upon her side, and turned from her with a quivering lip. “That’s different,” he says.
“It was for her sake—for her sake, Harry.” Again Miss Amory is in an attitude.
“There was something to be done for mine,” said Foker. “I would have taken you, whatever you were. Everything’s talked about in London. I knew that your father had come to—to grief. You don’t think it was—it was for your connexion I married you? D—— it all! I’ve loved you with all my heart and soul for two years, and you’ve been playing with me, and cheating me,” broke out the young man, with a cry. “Oh, Blanche, Blanche, it’s a hard thing, a hard thing!” and he covered his face with his hands, and sobbed behind them.
Blanche thought, “Why didn’t I tell him that night when Arthur warned me?”
“Don’t refuse her, Harry,” cried out Lady Clavering. “Take her, take everything I have. It’s all hers, you know, at my death. This boy’s disinherited.”—(Master Frank, who had been looking as scared at the strange scene, here burst into a loud cry.) “Take every shilling. Give me just enough to live, and to go and hide my head with this child, and to fly from both. Oh, they’ve both been bad, bad men. Perhaps he’s here now. Don’t let me see him. Clavering, you coward, defend me from him.”
Clavering started up at this proposal. “You ain’t serious, Jemima? You don’t mean that?” he said. “You won’t throw me and Frank over? I didn’t know it, so help me ——. Foker, I’d no more idea of it than the dead—until the fellow came and found me out, the d——d escaped convict scoundrel.”