"Oh no, my lord! oh no!" cried Langford; "let it not be so! I must wring your heart, but I trust it may be in some degree to heal it. You lately had a son whom you loved deeply; for his sake, I believe you have persisted for years in a course of injustice which the nobler part of your nature, I am sure, disavowed. My lord, he has been taken from you. The inducement to remain in wrong has been removed by the will of God, who therein has at once punished and opened the way to atonement. Let me beseech you, let me entreat of you, not to suffer this opportunity to pass by unnoticed. Do tardy justice, and instead of hardening yourself to crush and to injure one who could love you well, and against whom you can never succeed, think of what a satisfaction it will be to you, when from your own death-bed you look back and see that you have done all to repair a great wrong that you committed." "And do you make the assassination of my son," demanded the Earl, "a plea for my gratifying one who is accused of murdering him?" "My lord, I have taken it for granted throughout," replied Langford, "that you know me to be perfectly innocent of that deed. What I demand of you also, I have a right to demand. I ask you not to gratify me, but to do an act of justice; I ask of you to do honour to yourself, by taking away a stain from an honourable house that you have wronged." "Right!" exclaimed the Earl, with one of his dark sneers, as if the recollection of something he had before intended to say came suddenly back upon him; "in what consists your right? and how have you any connexion with the honour of the family of Beaulieu? Do you suppose that I am blind or stupid? Answer me! If you are so near and honourably akin to the dead Marquis of Beaulieu, how are you not the heir of his title and estates? What right has his bastard to prate of the honour of his family?" The blood rushed rapidly into Langford's cheek; his eye flashed, and his brow contracted; but it was only for a moment. With what was evidently a great effort, he mastered his own passions immediately, and replied, "The coarse term you have used is inapplicable to me, Lord Danemore. Your other question, as to why I have not succeeded, I could answer by a single word if I so pleased; and, did I feel as much assured of your son's death as you do, I would so answer it."