A passionate fire leaped into Sir Francis's face.
"Never. If I thought that he lived and would come here when I died, I would fire Devereux Court, though I perished in it. I would cram it full to the windows with dynamite, and leave not one stone standing upon another, sooner than he should enter its doors the head of the Devereuxs. You don't understand this feeling perhaps, Arbuthnot," he went on, in a lower voice, which was still, however, vibrating with an intense passion; "some day I will take you into the picture gallery with me, and then perhaps you will understand it a little better."
"I understand it now, Sir Francis," I told him: "but—but you are sure that your son Herbert was guilty? Think of the difference which his disgrace made to Rupert. It made him your heir, virtually your only son. If he was of a jealous disposition—Spanish people are, they say—the opportunity of getting rid of Herbert for ever and taking his place might have tempted him."
I am convinced that the idea which I falteringly suggested to Sir Francis Devereux had never in the vaguest way presented itself to him before. Nor was this wonderful. Courteous and polished man of the world though he was, his nature had preserved all the innate and magnificent simplicity of the ideal soldier. Falsehood and meanness were so utterly beneath him that he never looked for them in others. They represented qualities of which he knew nothing. Any one could have cheated him, but if by chance detected, the crime would have seemed to him unpardonable, and from him they would never have won forgiveness. Herbert, the son whom he loved, had told him a lie—a court-martial of his fellow-soldiers had determined that it was so—and the crime had seemed to him scarcely less black than the cowardice. He had never doubted it for one reason, because the decision of a court-martial was to him infallible, and for another, because the idea of falsehood in connection with his other son had never been suggested to him, and save from another's lips could never have entered into his mind.
I watched the lightning change in his face eagerly. A ray of sudden startling hope chased the first look of astonishment from his face, but it was replaced in its turn by a heavy frown and a tightening of the lips.
"We are not a race of liars," he began, sternly.
"But, if Rupert lied, Herbert was neither liar nor coward," I interrupted.
He looked at me in such a way that I could say no more.
"There was another witness beside Rupert——"
"Rupert's servant," I faltered, but he took no notice.