"Well now, sir," he said, at length, looking up with a softened look, in Lieberg's face--"Well now, sir, suppose I were to do as you wish, what surety should I have that you will stand by me, in the time of need?"
Lieberg bent down his head, speaking across the table, and replied, "I will acknowledge this night in presence of the turnkey, that in seeing you, and hearing your voice, I have become convinced you are not one of the men who broke into Mr. Carr's house, at Yelverly."
"That might do," said Harry Martin, in a thoughtful tone--"that would go a great way; but don't you think it would be a lie?"
"A lie!" exclaimed Lieberg, with his lip curling--"Are you fool enough to suppose, that a man of the world cares two straws about the mere empty shade of truth, when a great and important object is to be obtained? Where is the minister, the statesman, the patriot, who ever dreams of the abstract truth or falsehood of a particular proposition? The greatest reformer that ever lived, who harangues multitudes upon corruption, and all the evils that afflict a state or a religion, will no more scruple to falsify the truth in regard to an opponent, or to tell a bare falsehood to gain an end, than a schoolboy will to rob an orchard. Take them all, from Luther down to the lowest of your purity-mongers in this happy island, and you will find that there is not one of them who considers truth and falsehood, except in reference to the end they have in view. Away with such nonsense between us--it is only fit for a school-mistress's homily to girls of twelve years old. I will do what I say, and that is sufficient; and ere your trial comes on, I will so contrive to tutor Helen Barham that she shall work your acquittal, without committing herself."
"That will do--that will do!" said Harry Martin, meditating. "But then, sir, I thought you intended to have your revenge upon this young woman. I should not be sorry to have mine upon that scoundrel, her brother. Now let me see; though we jump together in that. I should not like the poor girl ill treated at all--I don't suppose you would ever go to strike a woman, or to punish her in that sort of way, at all?"
Lieberg smiled contemptuously, and replied--"You cannot understand, my good friend, the nature of the revenge I seek; but be satisfied! It is nothing of the kind you imagine."
"But I should like to know what it is, sir," said Harry Martin--"I should much like to know what it is before I consent.--Anything in reason, but no violence!"
His tone was very much altered, and Lieberg marked with no light satisfaction that everything promised well for his purposes.
"Well," he said, at length, "my revenge should be this: to force her to be mine, to bind her to myself by ties she loathes and abhors--to bow her pride to the dust, by none of the ill-treatment that you dream of, but by caresses that she hates--ay, and daily to know that her situation, as my paramour, is a pang and an anguish to her, while she has no means of freeing herself from the bond!"
"Well!" cried Harry Martin, starting up, with such fury that he overset the table, "you are a damneder scoundrel than I thought man could be! Get out, or I will dash you to atoms!" And at the same moment he seized Lieberg by the shoulder, as if to cast him headlong forth from the door.