warn your lordship," he said, "that if you speak so loud, I
shall hear every word."

"Hear and be damned to you!--That fellow there--you see him standing
there--the mushroom that he is! Good God! how I loved his mother! and
this is the way he serves me! But there was a Providence in the whole
affair! Never will I disbelieve in a Providence again! It all comes out
right, perfectly right! Small occasion had I to be breaking heart and
conscience over it ever since she left me! Hang the pinchbeck rascal!
he's no more Forgue than you are, Grant, and never will be Morven if he
live a hundred years! He's not a short straw better than any bastard in
the street! His mother was the loveliest woman ever breathed!--and
loved me--ah, God! it is something after all to have been loved so--and
by such a woman!--a woman, by God! ready and willing and happy to give
up everything for me! Everything, do you hear, you damned rascal! I
never married her! Do you hear, Grant? I take you to witness; mark my
words: we, that fellow's mother and I, were never married--by no law,
Scotch, or French, or Dutch, or what you will! He's a damned bastard,
and may go about his business when he pleases. Oh, yes! pray do! Marry
your scullion when you please! You are your own master--entirely your
own master!--free as the wind that blows to go where you will and do
what you please! I wash my hands of you. You'll do as you please--will
you? Then do, and please me: I desire no better revenge! I only tell
you once for all, the moment I know for certain you've married the
wench, that moment I publish to the world--that is, I acquaint certain
gossips with the fact, that the next lord Morven will have to be hunted
for like a truffle--ha! ha! ha!"

He burst into a fiendish fit of laughter, and fell back on his pillow,
dark with rage and the unutterable fury that made of his being a
volcano. The two men had been standing dumb before him, Donal pained
for the man on whom this phial of devilish wrath had been emptied, he
white and trembling with dismay--an abject creature, crushed by a cruel
parent. When his father ceased, he still stood, still said nothing:
power was gone from him. He grew ghastly, uttered a groan, and wavered.
Donal supported him to a chair; he dropped into it, and leaned back,
with streaming face. It was miserable to think that one capable of such
emotion concerning the world's regard, should be so indifferent to what
alone can affect a man--the n