"Certainly, I shall, and if I find as I expect--as I am sure--that your story is a pack of falsehoods--let me never see your face again."
Without a word of defense or explanation, Magnus left the room, and a few minutes afterward Oscar, at the call of the Governor, entered it.
Oscar's face was as pale as yesterday, but with a different pallor, a different expression--an expression not of grief and regret, but of fear and shame.
"Oscar," said the Governor, "I am sorry to trouble you about business so soon after your great sorrow, but an ugly story is being told about you in town, and as every lie has its tail, it is only right that you should hear of this one immediately, so that it may be quashed without delay."
Oscar's lower lip trembled--he felt the blow before it fell.
"Magnus--your brother Magnus--I am aware he has not been on brotherly terms with you--your mother has told me something about that--and let me say I do not sympathize with his protests and pretensions--I think them nothing but an excuse for his own selfishness--Magnus has just been here, and he tells me that a note of hand drawn in your favor for no less a sum than one hundred thousand crowns has been forged in my name. I do not believe the story and I do not want you to discuss it. I only ask you to contradict it--to contradict it flatly--or to leave me to deal with the real offender as I think best."
Oscar, standing by the Governor's desk, remained for a moment quite still. Then in a voice so low that it hardly seemed to come from him, he said:
"I can not contradict it, father. What Magnus has told you is true."
"True? You say it is true?"
Father and son stood facing each other for some moments without a word more being spoken. Then in hot words, broken by breathless pauses, the Governor poured out question after question, to which Oscar made no answer.