"Right!" Richard Fardell answered. "I am going to ask you a question, Mr. Mannering. Go back a good many years, as many years as you like. Is there anything in your life as a younger man, say when you first entered Parliament, which—if it were brought up against you now—might be—embarrassing?"
Mannering did not answer for several moments. He was already pale and tired, but he felt what little colour remained leave his face. Least of all he had expected this. Even now—what could the man mean? What could be known?
"I am not sure that I understand you," he said. "There is nothing that could be known! I am sure of that."
"There is a person," Fardell said, slowly, "who has made extraordinary statements. Our opponents have got hold of him. The substance of them is this: He says that many years ago you were the lover of a married woman, that you sold her husband worthless shares and ruined him, and that finally—in a quarrel—he declares that he was an eye-witness of this—that you killed him."
Mannering slowly subsided into his chair. His cheeks were blanched. Richard Fardell watched him with feverish anxiety.
"It is a lie," Mannering declared. "There is no man living who can say this."
"The man says," Fardell continued, stonily, "that his name is Parkins, and that he was butler to Mr. Stephen Phillimore eleven years ago."
"Parkins is dead!" Mannering said, hoarsely. "He has been dead for many years."
"He is living in Leeds to-day," Fardell answered. "A journalist from the Yorkshire Herald was with him for two hours this afternoon."
"Blanche—I was told that he was dead," Mannering said.