Clive had covered his eyes with his hand while Helen spoke; but at her last words he looked up, saying, in a stern tone, "Quite enough! He well deserved what he has met with. I did not intend it, it is true; but whether he be dead or living, he has only had the chastisement he merited. I had heard but an hour or two before all his base conduct to this dear child--I had heard that he had outraged, insulted, persecuted her; and although I had promised Norries not to kill him, yet I had resolved, the first time I met with him, to flay him alive with my horsewhip. I found him again insulting her; and can any man say I did wrong to punish the base villain on the spot? I regret it not; I would do it again, be the consequences what they may; and so I will tell judge and jury whenever I am called upon to speak."
"I trust that may never be, my son," replied the priest, looking at him with an expression of melancholy interest; "and I doubt not at all that, if you follow the advice which I will give you, suspicion will never even attach to you."
"I shall be very happy, father, to hear your advice," answered Clive; "but I have no great fears of any evil consequences. People cannot blame me for striking a man who was insulting and seeking to wrong my child. I did but defend my own blood and her honour, and there is no crime in that."
"People often make a crime where there is none, Clive," answered Mr. Filmer. "This young man is dead, and you must recollect that he was a peer of England."
"That makes no difference," exclaimed Clive. "Thank God we do not live in a land where the peer can do wrong any more than the peasant! I am sorry he is dead, for I did not intend to kill him; but he well deserved his death, and his station makes no difference."
"None in the eye of the law," replied Mr. Filmer, gravely; "but it may make much in the ear of a jury. I know these things well, Clive; and depend upon it, that if this matter should come before a court of justice at the present time, especially when such wild acts have been committed by the people, you are lost. In the first place, you cannot prove the very defence you make----"
"Why, my child was there, and saw it all!" cried Clive, interrupting him.
"Her evidence would go for very little," answered the priest; "and as I know you would not deny having done it, your own candour would ruin you. The best view that a jury would take of your case, even supposing them not to be worked upon by the rank of the dead man, could only produce a verdict of manslaughter, which would send you for life to a penal colony, to labour like a slave, perhaps in chains."
Clive started, and gazed anxiously in his face, as if that view of the case were new to him. "Better die than that!" he said; "better die than that!"
"Assuredly," replied Mr. Filmer. "But why should you run the risk of either? I tell you, if you will follow my advice, you shall pass without suspicion." But Clive waved his hand almost impatiently, saying, "Impossible, father, impossible! I am not a man who can set a guard upon his lips; and I should say things from time to time which would soon lead men to see and know who it was that did it. I could not converse with any of my neighbours here without betraying myself."