"You forget who your mother was," said Mackworth. "Your mother was Norah, James Horton's wife. She confessed to me the wicked fraud she practised, and has committed that confession to paper. I hold it. You have not a point of ground to stand on. Fifty Lord Saltires could not help you one jot. You must submit. You have been living in luxury and receiving an expensive education when you should have been cleaning out the stable. So far from being overwhelmed at this, you should consider how terribly the balance is against you."
He spoke with such awful convincing calmness that Charles's heart died away within him. He knew the man.
"Cuthbert," he said, "you are a gentleman. Is this true?"
"God knows how terribly true it is," said Cuthbert, quietly. Then there was a silence, broken by Charles in a strange thick voice, the like of which none there had heard before.
"I want to sit down somewhere. I want some drink. Will, my own boy, take this d——d thing from round my neck? I can't see; where is there a chair? Oh, God!"
He fell heavily against William, looking deadly white, without sense or power. And Cuthbert looked up at the priest, and said, in a low voice—
"You have killed him."
Little by little he came round again, and rose on his feet, looking round him as a buck or stag looks when run to soil, and is watching to see which dog will come, with a piteous wild look, despairing and yet defiant. There was a dead silence.
"Are we to be allowed to see this paper?" said Charles, at length.
Father Mackworth immediately handed it to him, and he read it. It was completely conclusive. He saw that there was not a loophole to creep out of. The two Tiernays read it, and shook their heads. William read it and turned pale. And then they all stood staring blankly at one another.