“It is soon said. I 'll not meet him.”
“Not meet him? But just consider—”
“I have considered, and I tell you once more I 'll not meet him. He cannot lay with truth any injury at my door; and I will not, to indulge his petulant vanity, be led to injure one whose fair fame is of more moment than our absurd differences.”
“I own to you, Cashel, this does not strike me as a wise course. By going out and receiving his fire, you have an opportunity of declaring on the ground your perfect innocence of the charge; at least, such, I fancy, would be what I should do, in a like event. I would say, 'My Lord, it is your pleasure, under a very grave and great misconception, to desire to take my life. I have stood here for you once, and will do so again, as many times as you please, till either your vengeance be satisfied or your error recognized; simply repeating, as I now do, that I am innocent.' In this way you will show that personal risk is nothing with you in comparison with the assertion of a fact that regards another far more nearly than yourself. I will not dispute with you which line is the better one; but, so much will I say, This is what 'the World' would look for.”
The word was a spell! Cashel felt himself in a difficulty perfectly novel; he was, as it were, arraigned to appear before a court of whose proceedings he knew little or nothing. How “the World” would regard the affair, was the whole question,—what “the World” would say of Lady Kilgoff,—how receive her exculpation. Now Linton assuredly knew this same “World” well; he knew it in its rare moods of good-humor, when it is pleased to speak its flatteries to some popular idol of the hour; and he knew it in its more congenial temper, when it utters its fatal judgments on unproved delinquency and imputed wrong.
None knew better than himself the course by which the “Holy Office” of slander disseminates its decrees, and he had often impressed Roland with a suitable awe of its mysterious doings. The word was, then, talismanic; for, however at the bar of Conscience he might stand acquitted, Cashel knew that it was to another and very different jurisdiction the appeal should be made. Linton saw what was passing in his mind, for he had often watched him in similar conflicts, and he hastened to press his advantage.
“Understand me well, Cashel; I do not pretend to say that this is the common-sense solution of such a difficulty; nor is it the mode which a man with frankness of character and honorable intentions would perhaps have selected; but it is the way in which the world will expect to see it treated, and any deviation from which would be regarded as a solecism in our established code of conduct.”
“In what position will it place her? That's the only question worth considering.”
“Perfect exculpation. You, as I said before, receive Kilgoff's fire, and protest your entire innocence; my Lord accepts your assurance, and goes home to breakfast—voilà tout!”
“What an absurd situation! I declare to you I shrink from the ridicule that must attach to such a rencontre, meeting a man of his age and infirmity!”