Sir Terence stood facing them again. He was a changed man. The fire had all gone out of him. His head was bowed and his face looked haggard and suddenly old. His lip curled into a sneer.
“Pantaloon in the comedy,” he said, remembering in that moment the bitter gibe that had cost Samoval his life.
“What did you say?” her ladyship asked him.
“I pronounced my own name,” he answered lugubriously.
“It didn’t sound like it, Terence.”
“It’s the name I ought to bear,” he said. “And I killed that liar for it—the only truth he spoke.”
He came forward to the table. The full sense of his position suddenly overwhelmed him, as Tremayne had said it would. A groan broke from him and he collapsed into a chair, a stricken, broken man.
CHAPTER XX. THE RESIGNATION
At once, as he sat there, his elbows on the table, his head in his hands, he found himself surrounded by those three, against each of whom he had sinned under the spell of the jealousy that had blinded him and led him by the nose.