Toft stretched out a shaking arm towards the paper. But my lord was before him. His huge hand fell on it. He tore it across and across, and threw the pieces under the table.

“No,” he said, “that won’t do! You will write at a venture and if you are right you will claim the money, and if you are wrong you will have this paper to show that I bargained with you. But I never meant to bargain with you, my good rascal. I knew you were a fraud. I knew it from the beginning. And now I’ve only one thing to say. Either you will tell me freely what you know, and in that case I shall say nothing. Or I report you to your master. That’s my last word.”

Toft shook from head to foot. He had done a hateful thing, he had been defeated, and exposure threatened him. As far as his master was concerned he could face it. But his wife, his daughter? Who thought him honest, loyal, who thought him a man! Who believed in him! How could he, how would he face them, if this tale were told?

My lord saw the change in him, saw how he shrank, and, smiling, he fancied that he had the man in his grasp, fancied that he would tell what he knew, and tell it for nothing. And twice Toft opened his lips to speak, and twice no words came. For at the last moment, in this strait, what there was of good in him—and there was good—rose up, and had the better; had the better, reinforced perhaps by his hatred of the heavy smiling face that gloated upon him.

For at the last moment, “No, my lord,” he said desperately, “I’ll not speak. I’m d—d if I do! You may do what you like.”

And before his lordship, taken by surprise, could interpose, the servant had turned and made for the door. He was half-way down the stairs before the other had risen from his seat. He had escaped. He was clear for the time, and safe in the road he breathed more freely. But he had gone a hundred yards on his way before he remarked that he was in the open air, or bethought himself to put on his hat.

CHAPTER XXII
MY LORD SPEAKS

For a few moments Audley had certainly hoped that he was going to learn all that Toft knew, and to learn it for nothing. He had been baulked in this. But when he came to think over the matter he was not ill content with himself, nor with his conduct of the interview. He had dealt with the matter with presence of mind, and in the only safe way; and he had taught the man a lesson. “He knows by this time,” he reflected, “that if I am a lord, I am not a fool!”

But this mood did not last long, and it was succeeded by one less cheerful. The death’s-head had never been wanting at his feast. The family tradition which had come down to him with his blood had never ceased to haunt him, and in the silence of the night he had many a time heard John Audley at work seeking for the means to displace him. Even the great empty house had seemed to mock his pretensions.

But until the last month his fears had been vague and shadowy, and in his busy hours he had laughed at them. He was Lord Audley, he sat, he voted, the doors of White’s, of Almack’s were open to him. In town he was a personage, in the country a divinity still hedged him, no tradesman spoke to him save hat in hand. Then, lately, the traces which he had found in the Great House had given a shape to his fears; and within the last hour he had learned their solidity. Sane or mad, John Audley was upon his track, bent upon displacing him, bent upon ruining him; and this very day the man might be laying his hand upon the thing he needed.