“I think you may be—just about as sure,” Mr. Caryll rejoined, entirely unperturbed, and he sauntered forward towards Hortensia. Rotherby and his mother watched him, exchanging glances.
Then Rotherby shrugged and sneered. “'Tis his bluster,” said he. “He'll be a farceur to the end. I doubt he's half-witted.”
Mr. Caryll never heeded him. He was bending beside Hortensia. He took her hand, and bore it to his lips. “Sweet,” he murmured, “'twas a treason that you intended. Have you, then, no faith in me? Courage, sweetheart, they cannot hurt me.”
She clutched his hands, and looked up into his eyes. “You but say that to comfort me!” she cried.
“Not so,” he answered gravely. “I tell you no more than what is true. They think they hold me. They will cheat, and lie and swear falsely to the end that they may destroy me. But they shall have their pains for nothing.”
“Ay—depend upon that,” Rotherby mocked him. “Depend upon it—to the gallows.”
Mr Caryll's curious eyes smiled upon his brother, but his lips were contemptuous. “I am of your own blood, Rotherby—your brother,” he said again, “and once already out of that consideration I have spared your life—because I would not have a brother's blood upon my hands.” He sighed, and continued: “I had hoped that you had enough humanity to do the same. I deplore that you should lack it; but I deplore it for your own sake, because, after all, you are my brother. Apart from that, it matters nothing to me.”
“Will it matter nothing when you are proved a Jacobite spy?” cried her ladyship, enraged beyond endurance by this calm scorn of them. “Will it matter nothing when it is proved that you carried that letter, and would have carried that other—that you were empowered to treat in your exiled master's name? Will that matter nothing?”
He looked at her an instant, then, as if utterly disdaining to answer her, he turned again to Rotherby. “I were a fool and blind, did I not see to the bottom of this turbid little puddle upon which you think to float your argosies. You are selling me. You are to make a bargain with the government to forbear the confiscations your father has incurred out of consideration of the service you can render by disclosing this plot, and you would throw me in as something tangible—in earnest of the others that may follow. Have I sounded the depths of your intent?”
“And if you have—what then?” demanded sullen Rotherby.