"I saw so little of her," replied Burrell carelessly, "that I really forget."
The Rabbi shook his head.
"Perhaps, then, Sir Willmott Burrell, you can remember this trinket, and inform me how it came into my daughter's hands: it was forced from her previous to her flight."
Burrell started, for it was a miniature of himself, which he had given her in the bud of his affection. At last he brazened out an assurance that, however like, it was not his; that he could not tell how young ladies obtained miniature pictures; that, if the Rabbi would look, he would observe the hair and eyes to be much [lighter.]
"Man!" exclaimed the Rabbi, fixing his keen black eye upon Burrell, "away from before me! Guilt and falsehood are on your lip. Your eye, the eye of the proud Christian, quails before the gaze of the despoiled and despised Jew; were you innocent, you would stand firm as I do now, erect in your Maker's image. Do you not tremble lest God's own lightnings blast you? Did you ever read, and reading believe, the Christian story of Ananias and Sapphira!"
If Burrell had possessed an atom of human feeling, he would have sunk abashed to the earth, and entreated the forgiveness of the Rabbi, whose flashing eyes and extended features glared and swelled with indignation; but the only two emotions that at the time contended within him were cowardice and pride. Had he the power, gladly would he have struck the Jew to death, as a punishment for what he deemed his insolence; but he feared the protecting and avenging hand of Cromwell, who never resigned a cherished purpose or a cherished person, and whose esteem for the learned Rabbi was perfectly known, and much talked of about the court.
"You cannot avoid crediting me for meekness, Ben Israel," he said, without, however, raising his eyes from the ground (for his blood boiled in his veins, though he spoke in a gentle tone); "you have come into my house, rated me upon a foul charge, and will not permit me to speak in my own defence. Take a cup of this wine, and then I will hear, if you can adduce it, further proof than that false portrait."
The Rabbi touched not the proffered beverage, but withdrew from his vest sundry letters, which he unfolded with a trembling hand: they were the communications he had received from the Polish Jew, with whose family at Paris his daughter had remained. He stated Burrell's extraordinary attention to Zillah, during his residence abroad—the frequent letters that passed between them under pretence of a correspondence with her father—her having received others from England since Burrell's return—her total change of manner—and, finally, her having quitted his house, and his being unable to discover where she had gone. Strong suspicions were added that she had followed Burrell to, and was now in, England; and there was a long and formal expression of regret from the Polish Jew that he had ever admitted the Christian beyond the threshold of his door.
The villain breathed more freely when he ascertained that the fugitive had not been traced from St. Vallery; and he felt he could have braved the affair with perfect ease and indifference, but for the information conveyed by Dalton's letter, and the consequent dread of Zillah's appearing before him, perhaps at the very moment that the often-asserted, and sworn to, lie passed his lips. It was now more difficult to dissemble than he had ever yet found it; he saw clearly that his oaths and protestations made but little impression upon the mind of Ben Israel, who filled up every pause either by lamentations for his daughter, execrations on her seducer, or touching appeals to one whose feelings were centred in self, and who therefore had little sympathy for sorrow that would have moved a heart of stone. Burrell was so thoroughly overpowered by the events of the evening, that the only point of exertion on which his mind rallied was a strong wish to rid himself of the Jew as speedily as possible, so that he might find opportunity to collect and arrange his thoughts—it therefore occurred to him to assume the bearing of injured innocence, as protestations had been of no avail; he accordingly said, in a tone and with a manner so earnest, that at the moment it almost destroyed the suspicions of the Rabbi:—
"Sir, I have over and over again asserted enough to convince any rational person that I know nothing of the crime you impute to me; having, in my own estimation, performed all that could be required, I must now withdraw. If you please to lay your statement before his Highness, I will defend myself, as I have now done, and let him judge between thee and me."