“Your duty!” ejaculated Charles, now speaking with an indignation that burst forth in frightful contrast with the unnatural tranquillity on which it so abruptly broke; “and wherefore have you not performed your duty in all things? Duty, indeed! But know, father, that there are other duties to fulfil than merely playing the part of a spy on your son’s actions:--there are such duties as giving him his proper name--allowing him to assume his just rights--and placing him in that social position which he ought to occupy! You menace me with the loss of fortune, father?--Oh! you know how vain and ridiculous is this threat--and how it aggravates the wickedness of all your former conduct towards me! I am no longer a child to be held in leading-strings--no longer a silly sentimentalist who, through maudlin and mawkish feelings of a false delicacy, will consent to have my nearest and dearest interests trampled upon--my privileges altogether withheld--my rights cruelly denied me! You have played the mysterious too long,--you have enacted the cruel and unnatural until endurance has become impossible;--and now you would assume the part of the absolute dictator--expecting to find me still a pliant, docile, grovelling slave,--without spirit--without courage--without even the common feelings of a man! But you are mistaken, father:--and if I have thus been driven to tell you my mind, you have only yourself to reproach, for so distressing--so painful a scene!” Thus speaking,--and before his father had so far recovered from the amazement into which this volley of words threw him, as to be able even to stretch out a hand to retain him,--Charles seized his hat, and rushed from the room. In less than a minute the front-door of the house closed behind him; and he hurried on, like one demented, to Suffolk Street. But before we accompany him thither, we must pause to explain the effect which this scene had upon his father. Indeed, Mr. Hatfield was struck with an astonishment so profound--a bewilderment so complete, that his heart seemed as if it were numbed against pain. He could not comprehend the drift of Charles’s passionate address,--otherwise than by supposing that the young man required to be recognised as a son, and not as a nephew. For it did not--as, in fact, it could not--for a single moment enter Mr. Hatfield’s head that Charles had discovered all the occurrences of former years, and that he had thence drawn the false and fatal inference that he--this same infatuated young man--was the heir to the proud title and vast estates of the Earldom of Ellingham. He therefore saw in his son’s conduct only the rebellious spirit of an individual who, having formed a connexion of which he was most likely ashamed and which he knew to be improper, endeavoured to meet his parents’ reproaches with recriminations, and seize upon the least shadow of an excuse or pretext for resisting the paternal authority.