The Seraph's grand, rolling voice broke in; he had stood chafing, chained, panting in agonies of passion and of misery.
“M. Baroni!” he said hotly, the furious vehemence of his anger and his bewilderment obscuring in him all memory of either law or fact, “you have heard his signature and your statements alike denied once for all by Mr. Cecil. Your document is a libel and a conspiracy, like your charge; it is false, and you are swindling; it is an outrage, and you are a scoundrel; you have schemed this infamy for the sake of extortion; not a sovereign will you obtain through it. Were the accusation you dare to make true, I am the only one whom it can concern, since it is my name which is involved. Were it true—could it possibly be true—I should forbid any steps to be taken in it; I should desire it ended once and forever. It shall be so now, by God!”
He scarcely knew what he was saying; yet what he did say, utterly as it defied all checks of law or circumstance, had so gallant a ring, had so kingly a wrath, that it awed and impressed even Baroni in the instant of its utterance.
“They say that those fine gentlemen fight like a thousand lions when they are once roused,” he thought. “I can believe it.”
“My lord,” he said softly, “you have called me by many epithets, and menaced me with many threats since I have entered this chamber; it is not a wise thing to do with a man who knows the law. However, I can allow for the heat of your excitement. As regards the rest of your speech, you will permit me to say that its wildness of language is only equaled by the utter irrationality of your deductions and your absolute ignorance of all legalities. Were you alone concerned and alone the discoverer of this fraud, you could prosecute or not as you please; but we are subjects of its imposition, ours is the money that he has obtained by that forgery, and we shall in consequence open the prosecution.”
“Prosecution?” The echo rang in an absolute agony from his hearer; he had thought of it as, at its worst, only a question between himself and Cecil.
The accused gave no sigh, the rigidity and composure he had sustained throughout did not change; but at the Seraph's accent the hunted and pathetic misery which had once before gleamed in his eyes came there again; he held his comrade in a loyal and exceeding love. He would have let all the world stone him, but he could not have borne that his friend should cast even a look of contempt.
“Prosecution!” replied Baroni. “It is a matter of course, my lord, that Mr. Cecil denies the accusation; it is very wise; the law specially cautions the accused to say nothing to criminate themselves. But we waste time in words; and, pardon me, if you have your friend's interest at heart, you will withdraw this very stormy championship; this utterly useless opposition to an inevitable line of action. I must attest Mr. Cecil; but I am willing—for I know to high families these misfortunes are terribly distressing—to conduct everything with the strictest privacy and delicacy. In a word, if you and he consult his interests, he will accompany me unresistingly; otherwise I must summon legal force. Any opposition will only compel a very unseemly encounter of physical force, and with it the publicity I am desirous, for the sake of his relatives and position, to spare him.”
A dead silence followed his words, the silence that follows on an insult that cannot be averted or avenged; on a thing too hideously shameful for the thoughts to grasp it as reality.
In the first moment of Baroni's words Cecil's eyes had gleamed again with that dark and desperate flash of a passion that would have been worse to face even than his comrade's wrath; it died, however, well-nigh instantly, repressed by a marvelous strength of control, whatever its motive. He was simply, as he had been throughout, passive—so passive that even Ezra Baroni, who knew what the Seraph never dreamed, looked at him in wonder, and felt a faint, sickly fear of that singular, unbroken calm. It perplexed him—the first thing which had ever done so in his own peculiar paths of finesse and of intrigue.