"Silence, bastard!" cried Sir Richard. "Ay, bite your lips;
the word is of your precious mother's making!"

Lady Devine slipped through her son's arms and fell on her knees
at her husband's feet.

"Do not do this, Richard. I have been faithful to you for
two-and-twenty years. I have borne all the slights and insults
you have heaped upon me. The shameful secret of my early love broke from me
when in your rage, you threatened him. Let me go away; kill me;
but do not shame me."

Sir Richard, who had turned to walk away, stopped suddenly,
and his great white eyebrows came together in his red face with a savage scowl.
He laughed, and in that laugh his fury seemed to congeal into
a cold and cruel hate.

"You would preserve your good name then. You would conceal this
disgrace from the world. You shall have your wish--upon one condition."

"What is it, sir?" she asked, rising, but trembling with terror,
as she stood with drooping arms and widely opened eyes.

The old man looked at her for an instant, and then said slowly,
"That this impostor, who so long has falsely borne my name,
has wrongfully squandered my money, and unlawfully eaten my bread,
shall pack! That he abandon for ever the name he has usurped,
keep himself from my sight, and never set foot again in house of mine."

"You would not part me from my only son!" cried the wretched woman.