“Ay, have I, sir,” answered he, in hurried confusion,—“five thousand!”
“Well, and what was your reply, sir? How did you meet such remarks?” said Dunn, sternly.
“Put them down, sir,—put them down at once; that is, I acknowledged that there was a sort of fair ground; I agreed in thinking that, everything considered, and looking to what we saw every day around us in life—and Heaven knows it is a strange world, and the more one sees of it the less he knows—”
“I 'm curious to hear,” said Dunn, with a stern fixedness of manner, “in what quarter you heard these comments on my character.”
Hankes trembled from head to foot. He was in the witness-box, and felt that one syllable might place him in the dock.
“You never heard one word of the kind in your life, sir, and you know it,” said Dunn, with a savage energy of tone that made the other sick with fear. “If ever there was a man whose daily life refuted such a calumny, it was myself.”
Dunn's emotions were powerful, and he walked the room from end to end with long and determined strides. Suddenly halting at last, he looked Hankes steadily in the face, and said,—
“It was the Kellett girl dared thus to speak of me, was it not? The truth, sir,—the truth; I will have it out of you!”
“Well, I must own you are right. It was Miss Kellett.”
Heaven forgive you, Mr. Hankes, for the lie, inasmuch as you never intended to tell it till it was suggested to you.