it will be better for him to live rather than to die, as we supposed he had. I feel not sure that death would not be preferable to the feelings he will have to endure. He will not bear the crossing of his high fortune meekly. He will strive against it; he will strive to prove the words false that take from him his high station, even though they are spoken by his father. He will contend for the rank and fortune and place which he has so long expected, even with his brother. Through life he will go on in bitterness and disappointment. His heart will henceforth be full of gall, and his lip breathing curses. It would have been so with me, and why should it not be so with him? He is my own child, the inheritor of my nature, if not of my name." It was evident that he was exciting himself to a dangerous degree by the exaggerated picture which his imagination drew; and Langford could not restrain from advancing, and trying to soothe him. "My dear father," he said, "if such be really Edward's character--though I think you judge of him and of yourself too harshly--how much better it will be to take the middle course that I have proposed; to conceal from him the period of my mother's death; and never to let him know that the marriage to which he owes his birth was an unlawful one. Willingly I offered, and willingly I repeat the offer to do more, and abandon to him altogether the rank and station which he has held in England, the estates which are attached to the title of our ancestors, and content myself with justifying my mother's fair fame to her kindred in another land, and with claiming there the fortune to which I have a right through my noble uncle." "You are all your mother!" exclaimed the Earl, gazing upon him. But then other feelings seemed to rush across his mind; the expression of his countenance changed, and he exclaimed, "What! would you have me afraid of my own son? Would you have me dastardly conceal the truth from him, for fear of his anger? No, no; he must hear it. It may be bitter, but he must hear it. Bitter things are good for us sometimes. But from whose lips shall he hear it?" he added after a moment's pause. "Not from mine, Henry; not from mine, for I feel that the hour is drawing nigh! I shall never see him more in life. I feel that there is a chill hand upon me: surely it must be the hand of death!"