He raised his hand slowly, as though tilting an imaginary glass to his lips.
"Only wait. They will offer you the cup some day, and we were always heavy drinkers. Pray God that you will stand it with a better grace than I—that you will forget the sting and rancor of it, and not carry it with you through the years."
His eyes grew brighter as he spoke, and his features were suddenly mobile and expressive.
"She said she believed it. She threw their lies in my face. She lashed me with them, and my blood was hotter then than now. She would not listen, and I forgot it was a woman's way. How was I to know it was only impulse? I ask you—how was I to know? Was I a man to crawl back, and ask her forgiveness, to offer some miserable excuse she would not credit? And you, brought into manhood to believe I was a thief—was I to stand your flinging back my denial? Was I to pose as the picture of injured innocence, and beg you the favor of believing? I would not have expected it of you, my son. By heaven, it would have stuck in my throat. I had gone my way too long, and the draught still tasted bitter. It burned, burned as I never thought it would again, when I first saw you standing watching me. Indeed it is only now that its taste has wholly gone—only now that I see what I have done, now when the lights are dim, and it is too late to begin again."
He stopped and squared his shoulders and the harshness left his voice.
"You understand, I hope," he added "Give him the paper, Henry." And he nodded towards Ives de Blanzy.
I drew it from my pocket, and handed it to him in silence.
"Now what is the meaning of this?" said Ives de Blanzy harshly. "This is not the paper! The cursed thing is blank inside!"
My father snatched it from his hands.
"Blank!" he muttered. "Blank! Clean as the driven snow! Is it possible I have failed in everything?"