een 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."

"The what?" said Foker. Blanche gave a scream.

"Yes," screamed out the Baronet in his turn, "yes, a d----d runaway
convict--a fellow that forged his father-in-law's name--a d----d
attorney, and killed a fellow in Botany Bay, hang him--and ran into the
Bush, curse him; I wish he'd died there. And he came to me, a good six
years ago, and robbed me; and I've been ruining myself to keep him, the
infernal scoundrel! And Pendennis knows it, and Strong knows it, and
that d----d Morgan knows it, and she knows it, ever so long; and I never
would tell it, never: and I kept it from my wife."

"And you saw him, and you didn't kill him, Clavering, you coward?"
said the wife of Amory. "Come away, Frank; your father's a coward. I am
dishonoured, but I'm your old mother, and you'll--you'll love me, won't
you?"

Blanche, eploree, went up to her mother; but Lady Clavering shrank from
her with a sort of terror. "Don't touch me," she said; "you've no heart;
you never had. I see all now. I see why that coward was going to give
up his place in Parliament to Arthur; yes, that coward! and why you
threatened that you would make me give you half Frank's fortune. And
when Arthur offered to marry you without a shilling, because he wouldn't
rob my boy, you left him, and you took poor Harry. Have nothing to do
with her, Harry. You're good, you are. Don't marry that--that convict's
daughter. Come away, Frank, my darling; come to your poor old mother.
We'll hide ourselves; but we're honest, yes, we are honest."

All this while a strange feeling of exultation had taken possession of
Blanche's mind. That month with poor Harry had been a weary month to
her. All his fortune and splendour scarcely sufficed to make the idea
of himself supportable. She was wearied of his simple ways, and sick of
coaxing and cajoling him.

"Stay, mamma; stay, madam!" s