“I am neither,” I shouted in a frenzy of rage, interrupting him. “If you were a younger man, I’d—by Heaven! I’d knock you down. But I respect your age, Lord Warnham, and I am not forgetful of the fact that to you I owe more than I can ever repay. My family have faithfully served their country through generations, and I will never allow a false accusation to be brought upon it, even though you, Her Majesty’s Foreign Secretary, may choose to make it.” He halted, glancing at me with an expression of unfeigned surprise.
“You forget yourself, sir,” he answered, with that calm, unruffled dignity that he could assume at will. “I repeat my accusation, and it is for you to refute it.”
“I can! I will!” I cried.
“Then explain the reason you handed me a sheet of blank paper in exchange for the instrument.”
“I cannot, I—”
He laughed a hard, cynical laugh, and, turning upon his heel, paced towards the opposite window.
“All I know is that the envelope I gave you was the same that you handed to me,” I protested.
“It’s a deliberate lie,” he cried, as he turned in anger to face me again. “I opened the dispatch, read it through to ascertain there was no mistake, and, after sealing it with my own hands, gave it to you. Yet, in return, you hand me this!” and he took from the table the ingeniously-forged duplicate envelope and held it up.
Then, casting it down again passionately, he added,—
“The document I handed to you was exchanged for that dummy, and an hour later the whole thing was telegraphed in extenso to Russia. The original was in your possession, and even if you are not actually in the pay of our enemies, you were so negligent of your duty towards your Queen and country that you are undeserving the name of Englishman.”