Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/305

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PAUL CLIFFORD.
297

heart, it is in vain to guess. He doubted not for a moment that he beheld before him his long-lost, his anxiously-demanded son! Every fibre, every corner of his complex and gloomy soul, that certainty reached, and blasted with a hideous and irresistible glare! The earliest, perhaps the strongest, though often the least acknowledged principle of his mind, was the desire to rebuild the fallen honours of his house; its last scion he now beheld before him, covered with the darkest ignominies of the law! He had coveted worldly honours; he beheld their legitimate successor in a convicted felon! He had garnered the few affections he had spared from the objects of pride and ambition, in his son. That son he was about to adjudge to the gibbet and the hangman! Of late, he had increased the hopes of regaining his lost treasure, even to an exultant certainty. Lo! the hopes were accomplished! How? With these thoughts warring, in what manner we dare not even by an epithet express, within him, we may cast one hasty glance on the horror of aggravation they endured, when he heard the Prisoner accuse him as the cause of his present doom, and felt