“This is a friend's letter,” said Stapylton, with a sneer; “and he has no better counsel to give me than to plead guilty, and ask for a mitigated punishment.”
Harrington was silenced; he would not by any expression of indignation add to the great anger of the other, and he said nothing. At last he said, “I wish from my heart—I wish I could be of any service to you.”
“You are the only man living who can,” was the prompt answer.
“How so—in what way? Let me hear.”
“When I addressed a certain letter to you some time back, I was in a position both of fortune and prospect to take at least something from the presumption of my offer. Now, though my fortune remains, my future is more than clouded, and if I ask you to look favorably on my cause now, it is to your generosity I must appeal; I am, in fact, asking you to stand by a fallen man.”
This speech, uttered in a voice slightly shaken by agitation, went to Barrington's heart. There was not a sentiment in his nature so certain to respond to a call upon it as this one of sympathy with the beaten man; the weaker side was always certain of his adherence. With a nice tact Stapylton said no more, but, pushing open the window, walked out upon the smooth sward, on which a faint moonlight flickered. He had shot his bolt, and saw it as it quivered in his victim's flesh. Barrington was after him in an instant, and, drawing an arm within his he said in a low voice, “You may count upon me.”
Stapylton wrung his hand warmly, without speaking. After walking for a few moments, side by side, he said: “I must be frank with you, Mr. Barrington. I have little time and no taste for circumlocution; I cannot conceal from myself that I am no favorite with your sister. I was not as eager as I ought to have been to cultivate her good opinion; I was a little piqued at what I thought mere injustices on her part,—small ones, to be sure, but they wounded me, and with a temper that always revolted against a wrong, I resented them, and I fear me, in doing so, I jeopardized her esteem. If she is as generous as her brother, she will not remember these to me in my day of defeat. Women, however, have their own ideas of mercy, as they have of everything, and she may not choose to regard me as you have done.”
“I suspect you are wrong about this,” said Harrington, breaking in.
“Well, I wish I may be; at all events, I must put the feeling to the test at once, for I have formed my plan, and mean to begin it immediately.”
“And what is it?”