‘Wherefore you waited me in a public place, and dared, you young presumptuous fool, to make public manifestation of your feelings. What, you’d show your high displeasure, would you!’
He rocked a little, back and forth, his lip lifting.
‘I waited you not,’ answered Brion, undaunted. ‘That meeting—it was the last from my desire. Methinks, had I foreseen it, I had never come to London.’
‘Better for you, sirrah, an you had not, nor listened to the flattering persuasions of a crafty counsellor: better had you stayed in your rustic obscurity, satisfied, with that old besotted rogue, your kinsman, to risk the penalties for recusancy, than run the deadlier peril of a throw with me. Ah, that opens your eyes! You did not guess, maybe, the range of my knowledge, when you complotted to discredit me.’
‘With whom? But what is the use to ask. I have plotted with no one—been guilty of no design against your credit. As to my feelings, I cannot control my instincts, nor would not if I could. For my kinsman, who loved and cherished me, when those who had owed me all disclaimed their debt, he is no rogue—I throw the slander in your teeth. It is worthy of one whose range of knowledge works through such vile means and instruments as have been used to-day to trap an unsuspecting boy. Belike it was he, that same lying reptile, that informed you of how I fell away that morning on seeing you. The action was of repulsion—in itself a convincing witness to any but a fawning pickthank. A plotter, methinks, had concealed his feelings more than I did.’
Again, in the silence that succeeded this hot outburst, it was as if the Captain’s nerves vibrated audibly in his body. Awaiting the certain consequences of such mad temerity, he stole a significant glance at his lord, and saw in the intolerant face an expression which both startled and perplexed him. There was some obstupefaction in it, but not the fury he had expected. Instead, interest, curiosity, a suggestion of some faint and hard-held emotion, seemed to battle there for ascendancy or suppression. Yet the words that followed, though not what he had looked for, were sneering enough:—
‘So innocent and yet so fearful! So guiltless a conscience, and yet that thought of peril! They hardly consort, according to my mind.’
The boy gave a curt laugh.
‘Decoyed hither by a lie, fallen upon and bound, my weapon taken from me; above all the character of him that holds me helpless in his power—it were unnatural for me, were it not, to dream of any harm designed me in such circumstances? Well, do your work. I understand so much of it that I am not a pleasant reminder in your eyes.’
‘Ha! I will not ask of what.’