Part 18 (2/2)

”Answered in a moment!” said the Seraph, with impetuous certainty.

”Cecil!--to prove this man what he is, not for an instant to satisfy me--where were you at that time on the 15th?”

”The 15th!”

”Where were you?” pursued his friend. ”Were you at mess? At the clubs?

Dressing for dinner?--where--where? There must be thousands of ways of remembering--thousands of people who'll prove it for you?”

Cecil stood mute still; his teeth clinched on his under lip. He could not speak--a woman's reputation lay in his silence.

”Can't you remember?” implored the Seraph. ”You will think--you must think!”

There was a feverish entreaty in his voice. That hunted helplessness with which a question so slight yet so momentous was received, was forcing in on him a thought that he flung away like an asp.

Cecil looked both of them full in the eyes--both his accuser and his friend. He was held as speechless as though his tongue were paralyzed; he was bound by his word of honor; he was weighted with a woman's secret.

”Don't look at me so, Bertie, for mercy's sake! Speak! Where were you?”

”I cannot tell you; but I was not there.”

The words were calm; there was a great resolve in them, moreover; but his voice was hoa.r.s.e and his lips shook. He paid a bitter price for the b.u.t.terfly pleasure of a summer-day love.

”Cannot tell me!--cannot? You mean you have forgotten!”

”I cannot tell you; it is enough.”

There was an almost fierce and sullen desperation in the answer; its firmness was not shaken, but the ordeal was terrible. A woman's reputation--a thing so lightly thrown away with an idler's word, a Lovelace's smile!--that was all he had to sacrifice to clear himself from the toils gathering around him. That was all! And his word of honor.

Baroni bent his head with an ironic mockery of sympathy.

”I feared so, my lord. Mr. Cecil 'cannot tell.' As it happens, my partner can tell. Mr. Cecil was with him at the hour and on the day I specify; and Mr. Cecil transacted with him the bill that I have had the honor of showing you--”

”Let me see it.”

The request was peremptory to imperiousness, yet Cecil would have faced his death far sooner than he would have looked upon that piece of paper.

Baroni smiled.

”It is not often that we treat gentlemen under misfortune in the manner we treat you, sir; they are usually dealt with more summarily, less mercifully. You must excuse altogether my showing you the doc.u.ment; both you and his lords.h.i.+p are officers skilled, I believe, in the patrician science of fist-attack.”

He could not deny himself the pleasure and the rarity of insolence to the men before him, so far above him in social rank, yet at that juncture so utterly at his mercy.

”You mean that we should fall foul of you and seize it?” thundered Rockingham in the magnificence of his wrath. ”Do you judge the world by your own wretched villainies? Let him see the paper; lay it there, or, as there is truth on earth, I will kill you where you stand.”

The Jew quailed under the fierce flas.h.i.+ng of those leonine eyes. He bowed with that tact which never forsook him.

”I confide it to your honor, my Lord Marquis,” he said, as he spread out the bill on the console. He was an able diplomatist.

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