"Pembroke Somerset!" echoed the earl. "A pretty guard for my
daughter, truly! I have no doubt that he is just such a fellow as his
father--just such a person as yourself! I am not to be imposed upon.
I know Lady Tinemouth to have been a disgrace to me, and you to be
that German adventurer on whose account I sent her from London."
Shocked at this calumny on the memory of a woman whose fame from any
other mouth came as unsullied as purity itself, Thaddeus gazed with
horror at the furious countenance of the man whom he believed to be
his father. His heart swelled; but not deigning to reply to a charge
as unmanly as it was false, he calmly took out of his pocket two
letters which the countess had dictated to her husband and her son.
Lord Harwold tore his open, cast his eyes over the first words, then
crumpling it in his hand, threw it from him, exclaiming, "I am not to
be frightened either by her arts or the falsehoods of the fellows
with whom she dishonored her name."
Thaddeus, no longer master of himself, sprang towards his unnatural
son, and seized his arm with an iron grasp. "Lord Harwold!" cried he,
in a dreadful voice, "were it not that I have some mercy on you for
that parent's sake, to whom, like a parricide, you are giving a
second death by such murderous slander, I would resent her wrongs at
the hazard of your worthless life!"
"My lord! my lord!" cried the trembling Harwold, quaking under the
gripe of Thaddeus, and shrinking from the terrible brightness of his
eye,--"my lord! my lord, rescue me!"
The earl, almost suffocated with rage, called out, "Ruffian! let go
my son!" and again raising his arm, aimed a blow at the head of
Thaddeus, who, wrenching the stick out of the foaming lord's hand,
snapped it in two, and threw the pieces out of the open window.
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