"God knows that it is true!" answered Hubert; and his face carried conviction if his words did not.
"It is impossible!" cried the General. "To begin with, if you had committed this crime—for a duel in the way you mention was a crime and nothing else—you would never have allowed this man to suffer for it. I absolutely refuse to believe, sir, that my kinsman is such a base, cowardly villain! This is a fit of delirium—nothing else!"
"It is simple truth," said Hubert sadly. "That I did not at once exonerate Andrew Westwood is, to my thinking, the worst part of my crime. I acknowledge that I—I dared not confess; and I left him to bear the blame."
"Good heavens, sir, do you tell me that to my face?" thundered the old man, with uplifted hand. "You are a disgrace to the family! I am glad that you do not bear my name."
He would perhaps even have struck the younger man if Cynthia had not twined her arms more closely round Hubert's neck, and made herself for the moment a defence to him. But Hubert drew himself away.
"Let me go, Cynthia," he said quietly. "You must not come between us. The General is right, and I am a disgrace to my name. He must do what he thinks fit."
But the General had turned away, and was walking furiously up and down the room, too angry and too much overcome for speech. Miss Vane was sobbing bitterly. Flossy watched her brother's face. She saw that he was trying not to implicate her. Would she escape? If his silence and her own could save her, she would be safe. But she had reckoned without Andrew Westwood.
"I beg pardon, sir," said Cynthia's father, addressing himself to the General; "but this ain't fair! Mr. Lepel is getting more of the blame than he deserves. Suppose you let me speak a word for him?"
"You!" said the General, stopping short. "You, who have suffered his punishment, cannot have much to say for him! If—if this is true," he went on, with a curious mixture of stiffness and of shame, "we have much to answer for with respect to you—much to make up——"
"Not so much as maybe you think," said Andrew Westwood. "I was bitter enough at the time, and I have thought often and often of the words that I said at the trial—how I cursed the man that brought me to that pass and all that he held dear. Curses come home to roost, they say. At any rate, the person who is dearest to him, I believe, is my very own daughter, whom I myself love better that any one in the whole wide world; and far be it from me to wish evil to her or to any one that she loves."