"Well? You falter; go on; had you done so?"

"Would you have felt no desire for revenge? Might there not have been
strife between you, danger, bloodshed? Harley, Harley! Is not such
silence pardonable in a mother? And why deprive you too of the only
friend you seemed to prize; who alone had some influence over you; who
concurred with me in the prayer and hope, that some day you would find a
living partner worthy to replace this lost delusion, arouse your
faculties,--be the ornament your youth promised to your country?
For you wrong Audley,--indeed you do!"

"Wrong him! Ah, let me not do that. Proceed."

"I do not excuse him his rivalship, nor his first concealment of it. But
believe me, since then, his genuine remorse, his anxious tenderness for
your welfare, his dread of losing your friendship--"

"Stop! It was doubtless Audley Egerton who induced you yourself to
conceal what you call his 'relations' with her whom I can now so calmly
name,--Leonora Avenel?"

"It was so, in truth; and from motives that--"

"Enough! let me hear no more."

"But you will not think too sternly of what is past? You are about to
form new ties. You cannot be wild and wicked enough to meditate what
your brow seems to threaten. You cannot dream of revenge,--risk Audley's
life or your own?"