A fiercer flush overspread his face, but almost
immediately the look of rage yielded to one of determined insult.
Possibly even the appearance of Donal was a relief to being alone with
his father.

"Mr. Grant," stammered his lordship, speaking with pain, "you are well
come!--just in time to hear a father curse his son!"

"Even such a threat shall not make me play a dishonourable part!" said
Forgue, looking however anything but honourable, for the heart, not the
brain, moulds the expression.

"Mr. Grant," resumed the father, "I have found you a man of sense and
refinement! If you had been tutor to this degenerate boy, the worst
trouble of my life would not have overtaken me!"

Forgue's lip curled, but he did not speak, and his father went on.

"Here is this fellow come to tell me to my face that he intends the
ruin and disgrace of the family by a low marriage!"

"It will not be the first time it has been so disgraced!" retorted the
son, "--if fresh peasant-blood be indeed a disgrace to any family!"

"Bah! the hussey is not even a wholesome peasant-girl!" cried the
father. "Who do you think she is, Mr. Grant?"

"I do not need to guess, my lord," replied Donal. "I came now to inform
your lordship of what I had myself seen."

"She must leave the house this instant!"

"Then I too leave it, my lord!" said Forgue.

"Where's your money?" returned the earl contemptuously.

Forgue shifted to an attack upon Donal.

"Your lordship hardly places confidence in me," he said; "but it is not
the less my duty to warn you against this man: months ago he knew what
was going on, and comes to tell you now because this evening I
chastised him for his rude interference."

In cooler blood lord Forgue would not have shown such meanness; but
passion brings to the front the thing that lurks.

"And it is no doubt to the necessity for forestalling his disclosure
that I owe the present ingenuous confession!" said lord Morven. "--But
explain, Mr. Grant."

"My lord," said Donal calmly, "I became aware that there was something
between lord Forgue and the girl, and was alarmed for the girl: she is
the child of friends to whom I am much beholden. But on the promise of
both that the thing should end, I concluded it better not to trouble
your lordship. I may have blundered in this, but I did what seemed
best. This night, however, I discovered that things were going as
before, and it became imperative on my position in your house that I
s