“Mode! the post-obit!” ejaculated the squire, relinquishing 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 assure 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, unblushing 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 shivered into pieces against the brazen metal with which the accident of constitution often arms some ignobler 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 assembly 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.