"Man, if you have anything to confess—to explain—say it!" breaks in Sir Mark, vehemently, who is half mad with hope and expectancy.
Portia has risen from her low seat, and forgetful or regardless of comment, is gazing with large, white eyes at the old man. Sir Christopher has grasped Mark Gore's arm with almost painful force, and is trembling so violently that Gore places his other arm gently round him, and keeps it there as a support. All, more or less, are agitated. Fabian alone makes no movement; with a face white to the very lips, he stands with his back against the mantelpiece, facing Slyme, so motionless that he might be a figure carved in marble.
Really deaf and blind to all except Fabian, the secretary takes no heed of Sir Mark's violent outburst. He has paused, indeed, at the interruption, some vague sense telling him he will not be heard while it continues, but now it has subsided he goes on again, addressing himself solely to Fabian, as though it had never occurred.
"It was for him I did it, for his sake," he says, monotonously. He is losing his head a little now, and his mind is wandering back to earlier days. "For my boy, my son—to save him. It was a sore temptation; and he never knew, he never knew." A gleam of something like comfort comes into his eyes as he says this.
"What did you do?" demands Dicky Browne, in an agony of hope and doubt. "Can't you say it at once and be done with it? Speak out, man—do!"
"Curse me! Kill me if you will!" cries Slyme, with sudden vehemence, stretching out his hands to Fabian, and still deaf to any voice but his. "You have been deceived, falsely accused, most treacherously dealt with. It was I forged that check—not you!"
The miserable man, as he makes this confession, falls upon his knees and covers his face with his hands.
A terrible cry bursts from Dulce; she springs to her feet, and would have rushed to Fabian but that Roger, catching her in his arms, prevents her. And indeed, it is no time to approach Fabian. He has wakened at last into life out of his curious calm, and the transition from his extreme quietude of a moment since to the state of ungovernable passion in which he now finds himself is as swift as it is dangerous.
"You!" he says, staring at the abject figure kneeling before him, in a tone so low as to be almost inaudible, yet with such an amount of condensed fury in it as terrifies the listeners. "You!" He makes a step forward as though he would verily fall upon his enemy and rend him in pieces, and so annihilate him from the face of the earth; but before he can touch him, a slight body throws itself between him and Slyme, and two small, white hands are laid upon his breast. These little hands, small and powerless as they are, yet have strength to force him backwards.
"Think," says Portia, in a painful whisper. "Think! Fabian, you would not harm that old man."