Chapter 9 - Page 2

"But consider, Richard--recollect yourself."

"I do," said Richard; "and what then?"

"Then you cannot but remember," said Hartley, "that unless there was a will in your favour, your birth prevents you from inheriting."

"You are mistaken, sir, I am legitimate.--Yonder sickly brats, whom you rescued from the grave, are not more legitimate than I am.--Yes! our parents could not allow the air of Heaven to breathe on them--me they committed to the winds and the waves--I am nevertheless their lawful child, as well as their puling offspring of advanced age and decayed health. I saw them, Adam--Winter showed the nursery to me while they were gathering courage to receive me in the drawing-room. There they lay, the children of predilection, the riches of the East expended that they might sleep soft and wake in magnificence. I, the eldest brother--the heir--I stood beside their bed in the borrowed dress which I had so lately exchanged for the rags of an hospital. Their couches breathed the richest perfumes, while I was reeking from a pest-house; and I--I repeat it--the heir, the produce of their earliest and best love, was thus treated. No wonder that my look was that of a basilisk."

"You speak as if you were possessed with an evil spirit," said Hartley; "or else you labour under a strange delusion."

"You think those only are legally married over whom a drowsy parson has read the ceremony from a dog's-eared prayer-book? It may be so in your English law--but Scotland makes Love himself the priest. A vow betwixt a fond couple, the blue heaven alone witnessing, will protect a confiding girl against the perjury of a fickle swain, as much as if a Dean had performed the rites in the loftiest cathedral in England. Nay, more; if the child of love be acknowledged by the father at the time when he is baptized--if he present the mother to strangers of respectability as his wife, the laws of Scotland will not allow him to retract the justice which has, in these actions, been done to the female whom he has wronged, or the offspring of their mutual love. This General Tresham, or Witherington, treated my unhappy mother as his wife before Gray and others, quartered her as such in the family of a respectable man, gave her the same name by which he himself chose to pass for the time. He presented me to the priest as his lawful offspring; and the law of Scotland, benevolent to the helpless child, will not allow him now to disown what he so formally admitted. I know my rights, and am determined to claim them."

"You do not then intend to go on board the Middlesex? Think a little --You will lose your voyage and your commission."

"I will save my birth-right," answered Middlemas. "When I thought of going to India, I knew not my parents, or how to make good the rights which I had