The one placed in ignorance between them, at once as it were the judge and champion of his brother-at-arms, felt wild and blind under this unutterable shame, which seemed to net them both in such close and hopeless meshes. He, heir to one of the greatest coronets in the world, must see his friend branded as a common felon, and could do no more to aid or to avenge him than if he were a charcoal-burner toiling yonder in the pine woods! His words were hoarse and broken as he spoke:
“Cecil, tell me—what is to be done? This infamous outrage cannot pass! cannot go on! I will send for the Duke, for—”
“Send for no one.”
Bertie's voice was slightly weaker, like that of a man exhausted by a long struggle, but it was firm and very quiet. Its composure fell on Rockingham's tempestuous grief and rage with a sickly, silencing awe, with a terrible sense of some evil here beyond his knowledge and ministering, and of an impotence alike to act and to serve, to defend and to avenge—the deadliest thing his fearless life had ever known.
“Pardon me, my lord,” interposed Baroni, “I can waste time no more. You must be now convinced yourself of your friend's implication in this very distressing affair.”
“I!” The Seraph's majesty of haughtiest amaze and scorn blazed from his azure eyes on the man who dared say this thing to him. “I! If you dare hint such a damnable shame to my face again, I will wring your neck with as little remorse as I would a kite's. I believe in his guilt? Forgive me, Cecil, that I can even repeat the word! I believe in it? I would as soon believe in my own disgrace—in my father's dishonor!”
“How will your lordship account, then, for Mr. Cecil's total inability to tell us know he spent the hours between six and nine on the 15th?”
“Unable? He is not unable; he declines! Bertie, tell me what you did that one cursed evening. Whatever it was, wherever it was, say it for my sake, and shame this devil.”
Cecil would more willingly have stood a line of leveled rifle-tubes aimed at his heart than that passionate entreaty from the man he loved best on earth. He staggered slightly, as if he were about to fall, and a faint white foam came on his lips; but he recovered himself almost instantly. It was so natural to him to repress every emotion that it was simply old habit to do so now.
“I have answered,” he said very low, each word a pang—“I cannot.”