"Did your Highness mean that I employed this man?" he said at last, with a clever mingling of astonishment and innocence in his voice and manner.
During a brief pause that followed, the eye of Cromwell was, as it were, nailed upon his countenance.
"I do mean, Sir Willmott Burrell, that you scorned not to employ this man. Know you this hand-writing?"
Sir Willmott's worst fears were confirmed.
"Permit me," he said, glancing over the document; then, looking from it with most marvellous coolness, he raised his eyes, exclaiming, "Sir, there is a plot for my destruction! This hand-writing is so well feigned, that I could have sworn it my own, had I not known the total impossibility that it could so be!"
"I have seen your hand-writing before:—write now, sir."
Burrell obeyed—took the pen in his hand, and Cromwell noted that it trembled much.
"Sir Willmott, I believe you in general place your paper straight?"
"Please your Highness, I do; but I am not cool—not collected enough to act as calmly as at my own table. The knowledge in whose presence I sit, might agitate stronger nerves than mine. Behold, sir, the villain counterfeited well; the W is exact, even in the small hair-stroke—the tt's are crossed at the same distance, and the ll's are of the height of mine:—a most villanous, but most excellent counterfeit!"
"Which?" inquired the Protector: "which mean ye is the counterfeit—the writing or the writer?——Without there!—Call in Robin Hays. Sir Willmott Burrell, Sir Willmott Burrell! the Lord deliver me from such as thou art!" he continued, swelling and chafing himself into anger, 'pricking the sides of his intent,' that so he might overwhelm the dastard knight. "We doubted, sir, at first, but we doubt no longer. Sir, you have robbed that old man of his daughter! You have, by so doing, perjured your own soul, and brought most foul dishonour upon England. I once heard you talk of patriotism: a true patriot loves his country too well to commit a dishonourable action! Sir, I have learned that you were married to the Jewish girl."