I shuddered as I received the pledge of hate; and his grasp, though I was in the plenitude of youthful vigour, was stronger than my own. This dreadful conference had been carried on principally in whispers; but owing to several bursts of emotion on my part, enough had transpired among those present to give them to understand that I had been claimed as a brother, and that I had very hard-heartedly rejected the claim. After we had passed our mutual defiance, there was silence between us for several minutes; he coiling himself up like an adder in his corner, and I pacing the deck, my bosom swelling with contending emotions. "If he should really be my brother," thought I. The idea was horrible to me. I again paused in my walk, and looked upon him steadfastly; but I found no sympathy with him. His style of thin and pallid beauty was hateful to me--there was no expression in his countenance upon which I could bang the remotest feeling of love. He bore my scrutiny, in his weakness, proudly. "Daunton," said I, at length, "you have failed: in endeavouring to make a tool, you have created an enemy and an avenger of the outraged laws. I shall be in London in the course of eight-and-forty hours--you cannot escape me--if it cost me a hundred pounds, I will loose the bloodhounds of justice after you--you shall be made, in chains, to give up your hateful secret. I am no longer a boy; nor you, nor the lawyer that administers my affairs, shall longer make a plaything of me. I will know who I am. Thank God, I can always ask Mrs Cherfeuil." At that name, a smile, no longer bitter, but deeply melancholy, and almost sweet, came over his effeminate features. But it lasted not long. That smile, like a few tones of his voice, seemed so familiar to me. Was I one of two existences, the consciousness of the one nearly, but not quite, blotting out the other? I looked upon him again, and the smile was gone; but a look of grief, solemn and heartrending, had supplied its place--and then the big and involuntary tear stood in his eye. I know not whether it fell, for he held down his arm to the concealment of his face, and spoke not. Had the wretch a heart, after all? As I turned to depart he lifted up his face, and all that was amiable in its expression had fled. With a calm sneer he said, "May I trouble you, Mr Rattlin, for those letters which I handed over to you for your perusal?" "I shall keep them." "Is your code of equity as low as mine? They are my property; I paid dearly enough for them. And what says your code of honour to such conduct?" "There, take your detested forgeries! We shall meet in London." "Mr Rattlin forgets that he is a prisoner." "Absurd! The charge cannot be sustained for a moment." "Be it so. Peradventure, I shall be in London before you." CHAPTER FIFTY NINE.