Part 45 (1/2)

”Heavens, Brandon! are you ill; or has anything happened? You alarm me!”

”Do you recognize these locks?” said Brandon, in a hollow voice; and from under the letters he drew some ringlets of an auburn hue, and pushed them with an averted face towards Mauleverer.

The earl took them up, regarded them for a few moments, changed colour, but shook his head with a negative gesture, as he laid them once more on the table.

”This handwriting, then?” renewed the judge, in a yet more impressive and painful voice; and he pointed to the letters.

Mauleverer raised one of them, and held it between his face and the lamp, so that whatever his features might have betrayed was hidden from his companion. At length he dropped the letter with an affected nonchalance, and said,--

”Ah, I know the writing even at this distance of time; this letter is directed to you!”

”It is; so are all these,” said Brandon, with the same voice of preternatural and strained composure. ”They have come back to me after an absence of nearly twenty-five years; they are the letters she wrote to me in the days of our courts.h.i.+p” (here Brandon laughed scornfully),--”she carried them away with her, you know when; and (a pretty clod of consistency is woman!) she kept them, it seems, to her dying day.”

The subject in discussion, whatever it might be, appeared a sore one to Mauleverer; he turned uneasily on his chair, and said at length,--

”Well, poor creature! these are painful remembrances, since it turned out so unhappily; but it was not our fault, dear Brandon. We were men of the world; we knew the value of--of women, and treated them accordingly!”

”Right! right! right!” cried Brandon, vehemently, laughing in a wild and loud disdain, the intense force of which it would be in vain to attempt expressing. ”Right! and, faith, my lord, I repine not, nor repent.”

”So, so, that's well!” said Mauleverer, still not at his ease, and hastening to change the conversation. ”But, my dear Brandon, I have strange news for you! You remember that fellow Clifford, who had the insolence to address himself to your adorable niece? I told you I suspected that long friend of his of having made my acquaintance somewhat unpleasantly, and I therefore doubted of Clifford himself.

Well, my dear friend, this Clifford is--whom do you think?--no other than Mr. Lovett of Newgate celebrity!”

”You do not say so!” rejoined Brandon, apathetically, as he slowly gathered his papers together and deposited them in a drawer.

”Indeed it is true; and what is more, Brandon, this fellow is one of the very identical highwaymen who robbed me on my road from Bath. No doubt he did me the same kind office on my road to Mauleverer Park.”

”Possibly,” said Brandon, who appeared absorbed in a revery.

”Ay!” answered Mauleverer, piqued at this indifference. ”But do you not see the consequences to your niece?”

”My niece!” repeated Brandon, rousing himself.

”Certainly. I grieve to say it, my dear friend,--but she was young, very young, when at Bath. She suffered this fellow to address her too openly.

Nay,--for I will be frank,--she was suspected of being in love with him!”

”She was in love with him,” said Brandon, dryly, and fixing the malignant coldness of his eye upon the suitor. ”And, for aught I know,”

added he, ”she is so at this moment.”

”You are cruel!” said Mauleverer, disconcerted. ”I trust not, for the sake of my continued addresses.”

”My dear lord,” said Brandon, urbanely taking the courtier's hand, while the anguis in herba of his sneer played around his compressed lips,--”my dear lord, we are old friends, and need not deceive each other. You wish to marry my niece because she is an heiress of great fortune, and you suppose that my wealth will in all probability swell her own. Moreover, she is more beautiful than any other young lady of your acquaintance, and, polished by your example, may do honour to your taste as well as your prudence. Under these circ.u.mstances, you will, I am quite sure, look with lenity on her girlish errors, and not love her the less because her foolish fancy persuades her that she is in love with another.”

”Ahem!” said Mauleverer, ”you view the matter with more sense than sentiment; but look you, Brandon, we must try, for both our sakes, if possible, to keep the ident.i.ty of Lovett with Clifford from being known. I do not see why it should be. No doubt he was on his guard while playing the gallant, and committed no atrocity at Bath. The name of Clifford is. .h.i.therto perfectly unsullied. No fraud, no violence are attached to the appellation; and if the rogue will but keep his own counsel, we may hang him out of the way without the secret transpiring.”

”But if I remember right,” said Brandon, ”the newspapers say that this Lovett will be tried some seventy or eighty miles only from Bath, and that gives a chance of recognition.”

”Ay, but he will be devilishly altered, I imagine; for his wound has already been but a bad beautifier to his face. Moreover, if the dog has any delicacy, he will naturally dislike to be known as the gallant of that gay city where he shone so successfully, and will disguise himself as well as he is able. I hear wonders of his powers of self-transformation.”

”But he may commit himself on the point between this and his trial,”