"But he had commission and warrants signed by the King himself; and private letters from him, which would have removed all suspicion," said Inglesant.
"Yes, sir, no doubt he had commissions, professedly from the King, as you have," said Lord Biron still more severely. "Your commission names Lord Glamorgan, and you are evidently of one council with him. Will you pledge me your honour that this paper was written by the King?"
And he held out Inglesant's commission,
Johnny hesitated: the circumstances of the case were beginning to arrange themselves before him, racked and weary as his brain was. If this news were true, if the Lord Lieutenant and the Council had really disclaimed, in the King's name, the negotiations, and boldly before the world proclaimed them unauthorized, and the warrants a forgery, the game was evidently played out, and his course clear before him, dark and gloomy enough. Yet he thought he would make one effort to recover the paper, a matter, whatever might turn out, of the first importance to the King.
"If I swear to you, Lord Biron, that the King wrote it, will you give it me back?"
"I am sorry, sir, that I cannot," said Lord Biron, "I am grieved at my heart to do anything which would seem to doubt in the least the word of a gentleman such as I have always believed you to be; but in the post I hold, and in the crisis of an affair so terribly important as this, I must act as my poor judgment leads me. I cannot give this paper up to any one until I learn more of this distressing business."
"If I swear to you," said Inglesant, beaten at every point, but fighting to the last, "that it is the King's writing, will you give me your word of honour that you will burn it immediately?"
"No, sir," said the other loftily; "what the King has been pleased to write, it can be the duty of no man to conceal."
"Then it is not the King's," said Inglesant.
Lord Biron stared at him for a moment, then folded up the papers carefully, and replaced them in his pocket-case. Then he went to the door of the dining-room at the top of the stairs and called down.