“Gently, my lord,” the duke admonished the viscount. “This—this gentleman has said that which touches your honor. He shall say more. He shall make good his words, or eat them. But the matter cannot rest thus.”
“It shall not, by God!” swore Rotherby, purple now. “It shall not. I'll kill him like a dog for what he has said.”
“But before I die, gentlemen,” said Mr. Caryll, “it were well that you should have the full story of that sorry adventure from an eye-witness.”
“An eye-witness? Were ye present?” cried two or three in a breath.
“I desire to lay before you all the story of how we met my lord there and I. It is so closely enmeshed with the story of that abduction and mock-marriage that the one is scarce to be distinguished from the other.”
Rotherby writhed to shake off those who held him.
“Will ye listen to this fellow?” he roared. “He's a spy, I tell you—a Jacobite spy!” He was beside himself with anger and apprehension, and he never paused to weigh the words he uttered. It was with him a question of stopping his accuser's mouth with whatever mud came under his hands. “He has no right here. It is not to be borne. I know not by what means he has thrust himself among you, but—”
“That is a knowledge I can afford your lordship,” came Stapleton's steady voice to interrupt the speaker. “Mr. Caryll is here by my invitation.”
“And by mine and Gascoigne's here,” added Sir Harry Collis, “and I will answer for his quality to any man who doubts it.”
Rotherby glared at Mr. Caryll's sponsors, struck dumb by this sudden and unexpected refutation of the charge he had leveled.