"Do not fear that I shall ever think worse of you; and who else will know it? Do not fear me. No;--I, too, have reasons to hate and to fear this Philip Vaudemont; for Vaudemont shall be his name, and not Beaufort, in spite of fifty such scraps of paper! He has known a man--my worst foe-- he has secrets of mine--of my past-perhaps of my present: but I laugh at his knowledge while he is a wandering adventurer;--I should tremble at that knowledge if he could thunder it out to the world as Philip Beaufort of Beaufort Court! There, I am candid with you. Now hear my plan. Prove to Arthur that his visitor is a convicted felon, by sending the officers of justice after him instantly--off with him again to the Settlements. Defy a single witness--entrap Vaudemont back to France and prove him (I think I will prove him such--I think so--with a little money and a little pains)--prove him the accomplice of William Gawtrey, a coiner and a murderer! Pshaw! take yon paper. Do with it as you will-- keep it-give it to Arthur--let Philip Vaudemont have it, and Philip Vaudemont will be rich and great, the happiest man between earth and paradise! On the other hand, come and tell me that you have lost it, or that I never gave you such a paper, or that no such paper ever existed; and Philip Vaudemont may live a pauper, and die, perhaps, a slave at the galleys! Lose it, I say,--lose it,--and advise with me upon the rest." Horror-struck, bewildered, the weak man gazed upon the calm face of the Master-villain, as the scholar of the old fables might have gazed on the fiend who put before him worldly prosperity here and the loss of his soul hereafter. He had never hitherto regarded Lilburne in his true light. He was appalled by the black heart that lay bare before him. "I can't destroy it--I can't," he faltered out; "and if I did, out of love for Arthur,--don't talk of galleys,--of vengeance--I--I--" "The arrears of the rents you have enjoyed will send you to gaol for your life. No, no; _don't_ destroy the paper."