of the lady
whom I had hoped, with less presumption, to call my bride; and in this,
how can I tell that you have not tricked and betrayed me? Is there
anything in our past acquaintance that warrants me to believe that,
instead of serving me, you sought but to serve yourself? Be that as it
may, I had but one mode of repairing to the head of my house the wrongs
I have done him, and that was by saving his daughter from a derogatory
alliance with an impostor who had abetted my schemes for hire, and who
now would filch for himself their fruit."

"Duke!" exclaimed Randal.

The duke turned his back. Randal extended his hands to the squire. "Mr.
Hazeldean--what? you, too, condemn me, and unheard?"

"Unheard!--zounds, no! If you have anything to say, speak truth, and
shame the devil."

"I abet Frank's marriage! I sanction the post-obit! Oh!" cried Randal,
clinging to a straw, "if Frank himself were but here!"

Harley's compassion vanished before this sustained hypocrisy.

"You wish for the presence of Frank Hazeldean? It is just." Harley
opened the door of the inner room, and Frank appeared at the entrance.

"My son! my son!" cried the squire, rushing forward, and clasping Frank
to his broad, fatherly breast.

This affecting incident gave a sudden change to the feelings of the
audience, and for a moment Randal himself was forgotten. The young
man seized that moment. Reprieved, as it were, from the glare of
contemptuous, accusing eyes, slowly he crept to the door, slowly and
noiselessly, as the viper, when it is wounded, drops its crest and
glides writhing through the grass. Levy followed him to the threshold,
and whispered in his ear,

"I could not help it,--you would have done the same by me. You see you
have failed in everything; and when a man fails completely, we both
agreed that we must give him up altogether."

Randal said not a word, and the baron marked his shadow fall on the
broad stairs, stealing down, down, step after step, till it faded from
the stones.

"But he was of some use," muttered Levy. "His treachery and his exposure
will gall the childless Egerton. Some little revenge still!"

The count touched the arm of the musing usurer,

"J'ai bien joue mon role, n'est ce pas?"--(I have well played my part,
have I not?)

"Your part! Ah, but, my dear count, I do not quite understand it."

"Ma foi, you are passably dull. I had just been landed in France, when
a letter from L'Estrange reached me. It was