And from these
unsuspected sources, this false friend and kinsman had contrived to
throw out hints of his brother's reported sliding heart to the
shrinking object of his own base and perfidious passion. At last,
believing Robert to be unfaithful, she sunk into a depression of
spirits which Sir Fulke thought would be easy to work to an assent,
in mere reckless melancholy, to the union he sought. With that
object, and to break the knot at once by a trenchant blow on Robert's
side, Algernon forged that letter in Edith Beaufort's handwriting
which had announced so unblushingly her preparations for an immediate
marriage with the eldest son.
"But," continued Sir Fulke, "death has put an end to this unnatural
rivalry. And my poor girl, undeceived in her opinion of you, longs to
see you, and to give you that hand which your ill-fated brother and
infatuated father so unjustly detained from you. You are now my only
son, the only prop of my house, the only comfort of my old age! My
son, do not abandon to his remorse and sorrow your only parent."
On receipt of this packet, in a consternation of amazement, and a
soul divided between rekindled love in all its fires and pity and
honor towards her he had betrayed before the altar of heaven, Robert
Somerset sacrificed both to his imperious passion. He adored the
woman on whose account he had left the country, and though every tie,
sacred and just, bound him to the tender and faithful wife he must
forsake to regain that idol, he at once consigned her to the full
horrors of desertion and hastened to England.
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