Devoted to ambition for his own sake, as well as for that of his
favorite son, Sir Fulke owned that he had from the first of Edith
Beaufort's becoming his ward resolved on her union in due time with
Algernon, in order to endow him, in addition to his own rich
inheritance, with all the political influence attendant on the vast
estate to which she was heiress, and so build up the family, in the
consideration of government, to any pitch of coroneted rank their
high-reaching parent might choose to reclaim.
With many prayers for pardon from Heaven and the cruelly-injured
Robert, the wretched father acknowledged that this confession was
wrung from him by the sudden death of his eldest son, who having been
thrown off his horse on a heap of stones in the high-road, after
three days of severe bodily and mental suffering, now lay a sadly-
disfigured corpse, under the vainly mourning blazonry of his house,
in the darkened hall of his ancestors. The disconsolate narrator then
added, "that in contrite repentance his son had conjured him, with
his dying breath, to confess the falsehood of all that had passed to
the grossly-abused Robert;" amongst which, was Algernon turning to
the account of his own designs every confidence imparted to him by
his brother, in his _incognito_ movements, and awakened intimacy
with the noble Sarmatian family at Florence.
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