dely; "there is no need to
defend a father to his son. Tell me, rather, why you have revealed this
secret to me at all, and to what end have you added this to the other
calamities of my fortune?"

He stood up as he said these words, and paced the room with slow steps,
his head sunk upon his bosom, and his arms dropped listlessly at
his side. Talbot looked upon the figure, marked with every trait of
despondency, and for some moments he seemed really to sorrow over the
part he had taken; then rallying with his accustomed energy, he said--

"If I had thought, Mark, that you had neither ambition for yourself,
nor hatred for an enemy, I would never have told you these things. I did
fancy, however, that you were one who struggled indignantly against an
inglorious fortune, and, still more, believed that you were not of a
race to repay injury with forgetfulness. Hemsworth, you have often
told me, has been the insulting enemy of your family. Not content with
despoiling you of fortune, he has done his utmost to rob you of fair
fame--to reduce an honoured house to the ignoble condition of peasants,
and to break down the high and haughty spirit of a noble family by the
humiliating ills of poverty. If you can forgive his injuries, can you
forget his insults and his taunts?"

"Would you have me repay either by arraigning my father as a criminal?"

"Not so, Mark; many other courses are open to you. The knowledge of
this fact by you, places you in a position to make your own terms with
Hemsworth. He who has spent thirty thousand pounds on a purchase without
a title, must needs yield to any conditions you think fit to impose--you
have but to threaten-----"

"That I will expose my father in a court of justice," said Mark, between
his teeth; "that I will put money in one scale, and the honour of my
house in the other; that I will truck the name and credit of my race,
against the acres that were theirs. No, no; you mistake me much; you
know little of the kind of vengeance my heart yearns for, or you would
never have tempted me with such a bait as this."

"Be it so," said Talbot, coolly; "Hemsworth is only the luckier man that
has met such a temperament as yours to deal with; a vulgar spirit like
mine would have turned the tables upon him. But I have done; keep the
paper, Mark, there might come a time when it should prove useful to you.
Hark!--what's that noise below? Don't you hear that fellow Lawless
voice in the court-yard?"--and a