Part 177 (2/2)

”Lent himself to that, my good sir!” said the count. ”Do you suppose that the Marchesa di Negra could have condescended to an alliance with a Mr. Hazeldean--”

”Condescended! a Hazeldean of Hazeldean!” exclaimed the squire, turning fiercely, and half choked with indignation. ”Unless,” continued the count, imperturbably, ”she had been compelled by circ.u.mstances to do that said Mr. Hazeldean the honour to accept a pecuniary accommodation, which she had no other mode to discharge? And here, sir, the family of Hazeldean, I am bound to say, owe a great debt of grat.i.tude to Mr.

Leslie; for it was he who most forcibly represented to her the necessity for this misalliance; and it was he, I believe, who suggested to my friend the baron the mode by which Mr. Hazeldean was best enabled to afford the accommodation my sister deigned to accept.”

”Mode! the post-obit!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the squire, relinquis.h.i.+ng his hold of Randal to lay his gripe upon Levy.

The baron shrugged his shoulders. ”Any friend of Mr. Frank Hazeldean's would have recommended the same, as the most economical mode of raising money.”

Parson Dale, who had at first been more shocked than any one present at these gradual revelations of Randal's treachery, now turning his eyes towards the young man, was so seized with commiseration at the sight of Randal's face, that he laid his hand on Harley's arm, and whispered him, ”Look, look at that countenance!--and one so young! Spare him, spare him!”

”Mr. Leslie,” said Harley, in softened tones, ”believe me that nothing short of justice to the Duke di Serrano--justice even to my young friend Mr. Hazeldean--has compelled me to this painful duty. Here let all inquiry terminate.”

”And,” said the count, with exquisite blandness, ”since I have been informed by my Lord L'Estrange that Mr. Leslie has represented as a serious act on his part that personal challenge to myself, which I understood was but a pleasant and amicable arrangement in our baffled scheme, let me a.s.sure Mr. Leslie that if he be not satisfied with the regret that I now express for the leading share I have taken in these disclosures, I am wholly at Mr. Leslie's service.”

”Peace, homicide,” cried the parson, shuddering; and he glided to the side of the detected sinner, from whom all else had recoiled in loathing.

Craft against craft, talent against talent, treason against treason--in all this Randal Leslie would have risen superior to Giulio di Peschiera.

But what now crushed him was not the superior intellect,--it was the sheer brute power of audacity and nerve. Here stood the careless, unblus.h.i.+ng villain, making light of his guilt, carrying it away from disgust itself, with resolute look and front erect. There stood the abler, subtler, profounder criminal, cowering, abject, pitiful; the power of mere intellectual knowledge s.h.i.+vered into pieces against the brazen metal with which the accident of const.i.tution often arms some ign.o.bler nature.

The contrast was striking, and implied that truth so universally felt, yet so little acknowledged in actual life, that men with audacity and force of character can subdue and paralyze those far superior to themselves in ability and intelligence. It was these qualities which made Peschiera Randal's master; nay, the very physical attributes of the count, his very voice and form, his bold front and unshrinking eye, overpowered the acuter mind of the refining schemer, as in a popular a.s.sembly some burly Cleon cows into timorous silence every dissentient sage. But Randal turned in sullen impatience from the parson's whisper, that breathed comfort or urged repentance; and at length said, with clearer tones than he had yet mustered,

”It is not a personal conflict with the Count di Peschiera that can vindicate my honour; and I disdain to defend myself against the accusations of a usurer, and of a mam who--”

”Monsieur!” said the count, drawing himself up.

”A man who,” persisted Randal, though he trembled visibly, ”by his own confession, was himself guilty of all the schemes in which he would represent me as his accomplice, and who now, not clearing himself, would yet convict another--”

”Cher pet.i.t monsieur!” said the count, with his grand air of disdain, ”when men like me make use of men like you, we reward them for a service if rendered, or discard them if the service be not done; and if I condescend to confess and apologize for any act I have committed, surely Mr. Randal Leslie might do the same without disparagement to his dignity. But I should never, sir, have taken the trouble to appear against you, had you not, as I learn, pretended to the hand of the lady whom I had hoped, with less presumption, to call my bride; and in this, how can I tell that you have not tricked and betrayed me? Is there anything in our past acquaintance that warrants me to believe that, instead of serving me, you sought but to serve yourself? Be that as it may, I had but one mode of repairing to the head of my house the wrongs I have done him, and that was by saving his daughter from a derogatory alliance with an impostor who had abetted my schemes for hire, and who now would filch for himself their fruit.”

”Duke!” exclaimed Randal.

The duke turned his back. Randal extended his hands to the squire. ”Mr.

Hazeldean--what? you, too, condemn me, and unheard?”

”Unheard!--zounds, no! If you have anything to say, speak truth, and shame the devil.”

”I abet Frank's marriage! I sanction the post-obit! Oh!” cried Randal, clinging to a straw, ”if Frank himself were but here!”

Harley's compa.s.sion vanished before this sustained hypocrisy.

”You wish for the presence of Frank Hazeldean? It is just.” Harley opened the door of the inner room, and Frank appeared at the entrance.

”My son! my son!” cried the squire, rus.h.i.+ng forward, and clasping Frank to his broad, fatherly breast.

This affecting incident gave a sudden change to the feelings of the audience, and for a moment Randal himself was forgotten. The young man seized that moment. Reprieved, as it were, from the glare of contemptuous, accusing eyes, slowly he crept to the door, slowly and noiselessly, as the viper, when it is wounded, drops its crest and glides writhing through the gra.s.s. Levy followed him to the threshold, and whispered in his ear,

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