“And He will help you,” returned Frere, “if your repentance is indeed sincere; but that must be proved by acts, not words—Will you give up your revenge, and agree not to meet Lord Bellefield tomorrow?”
“No, by Heaven!” exclaimed Lewis fiercely, springing to his feet. “The sole possession my father bequeathed to me was his name and his spotless honour, and it shall never be said that he left them to one whom men had a right to call coward.”
“And yet a coward you are,” returned Frere sternly, “not in the particular of brute courage, shared with you by the tiger and the wolf, but in the far higher attribute of moral courage, the martyr spirit which enables the highest order of minds to endure the scorn of worldly men, rather than offend God and degrade themselves by the commission of evil. I will ask one more question, and then I have done with you: you say you believe in a future and eternal life—are you fitted to enter upon that life to-morrow through the dark portal of a sudden and violent death?”
As Frere uttered these awful words, in a tone of the deepest solemnity, Lewis, who had been impatiently pacing the room, stopped short as though arrested in his course by a thunderstroke. Placing his hand to his brow, he staggered as if about to fall, and Frere sprang up to support him. Recovering himself, he murmured—
“I must be alone, in half-an-hour you shall know my decision.”
Then opening the door, he motioned to Frere to await him in the painting-room, and closing it after him, locked it. What passed in that half-hour—how, prostrate before the Great White Throne, the proud man wrestled with his agony, can be known but to One, the Searcher of Hearts. When, at the expiration of the prescribed time, the door was gently unclosed and Frere entered, he found Lewis, pale indeed and trembling, but calm as a little child.
“Bless you, dear old friend!” he said, “Truth and you have conquered; I place myself in your hands—do with me as you will.”