Enter EGERTON in great warmth and emotion;
SIDNEY following, as in conversation.

Sid.  Nay, dear Charles, but why are you so impetuous?—­why do you break from me so abruptly?

Eger. [With great warmth.] I have done, sir,—­you have refused.—­I have nothing more to say upon the subject.—­I am satisfied.

Sid. [With a glow of tender friendship.] Come, come—­correct this warmth,—­it is the only weak ingredient in your nature, and you ought to watch it carefully.  If I am wrong,—­I will submit without reserve;—­but consider the nature of your request—­and how it would affect me:—­from your earliest youth, your father has honoured me with the care of your education, and the general conduct of your mind; and, however singular and morose his temper may be to others,—­to me—­he has ever been respectful and liberal.—­I am now under his roof too,—­and because I will not abet an unwarrantable passion by an abuse of my sacred character, in marrying you beneath your rank,—­and in direct opposition to your father’s hopes and happiness,—­you blame me—­you angrily break from me—­and call me unkind.

Eger. [With tenderness and conviction.] Dear Sidney,—­for my warmth I stand condemned:  but for my marriage with Constantia, I think I can justify it upon every principle of filial duty,—­honour,—­and worldly prudence.

Sid.  Only make that appear, Charles, and you know you may command me.

Eger. [With great filial regret.] I am sensible how unseemly it appears in a son to descant on the unamiable passions of a parent;—­but, as we are alone, and friends,—­I cannot help observing in my own defence,—­that when a father will not allow the use of reason to any of his family—­when his pursuit of greatness makes him a slave abroad—­only to be a tyrant at home,—­when a narrow partiality to Scotland, on every trivial occasion, provokes him to enmity even with his wife and children, only because they dare give a national preference where they think it most justly due;—­and when, merely to gratify his own ambition, he would marry his son into a family he detests,—­[great warmth.] sure, Sidney, a son thus circumstanced (from the dignity of human reason and the feelings of a loving heart) has a right—­not only to protest against the blindness of a parent, but to pursue those measures that virtue and happiness point out.

Sid.  The violent temper of Sir Pertinax, I own, cannot be defended on many occasions, but still—­your intended alliance with Lord Lumbercourt—­

Eger. [With great impatience.] O! contemptible!—­a trifling, quaint, haughty, voluptuous, servile tool,—­the mere lackey of party and corruption; who, for the prostitution of near thirty years and the ruin of a noble fortune, has had the despicable satisfaction, and the infamous honour—­of being kicked up and kicked down—­kicked in and kicked out,—­ just as the insolence, compassion, or convenience of leaders predominated:—­and now—­being forsaken by all parties, his whole political consequence amounts to the power of franking a letter, and the right honourable privilege of not paying a tradesman’s bill.