“Listen to me now attentively, and I will explain to you my uncle’s position; a very few words will suffice, and you are not a man to require more than are necessary. He has by great effort and at heavy sacrifice got a small sum of money——”
“What do you call a small sum?” broke he in. “Is it a hundred?”
“No; not fifty!”
A long whistle was O’Rorke’s reply, as he arose and took up his hat.
“You had better hear me out,” said she, calmly. “This sum I have here—it is thirty-five pounds; he empowers me to place it in your hands to-day, with the promise of as much more the day before the assizes open.”
“And why not at once? Why not now?”
“You shall hear. He desires and demands, in return for this aid, that he be not summoned as a witness on the trial. To call him would be a needless exposure—a mere valueless cruelty.”
“It would not,” cried the other, fiercely. “It’s not at this time of day any one has to know the effect of putting a gentleman in the witness-box, when it is a poor labouring man is in the dock. Let John Luttrell come into court, and, after sitting beside the Chief Baron on the Bench, get up on the table and take his oath that he has known Peter Malone, the prisoner, for more than twenty years, as a hardworking, quiet, decent man, trying to bring up his family respectably, and, indeed, with such a desire to better their condition in life, that he, John Luttrell of Arran, was not ashamed to make one of that same Peter Malone’s daughters his wife, so well brought up, so well educated were they——”
“Stop! this cannot be. I tell you it is impossible.”
“And why is it impossible? Is it true what I’m saying? Was Peter Malone’s daughter John Hamilton Luttrell’s wife or not? There’s the whole question. And what sort of a man or a gentleman is he that is ashamed to own his wife?”