s hand upon his sword; but the knight, with a contemptuous
smile, replied to him as coldly as before.

'You will take notice, sir--if you can discriminate sufficiently--that I
have taken the trouble to deny nothing. Your discernment is hardly fine
enough for the perusal of faces, not of a kind as coarse as your speech;
nor has it ever been, that I remember; or, in one face that I could
name, you would have read indifference, not to say disgust, somewhat
sooner than you did. I speak of a long time ago,--but you understand
me.'

'Disguise it as you will, you mean denial. Denial explicit or reserved,
expressed or left to be inferred, is still a lie. You say you don't
deny. Do you admit?'

'You yourself,' returned Sir John, suffering the current of his
speech to flow as smoothly as if it had been stemmed by no one word of
interruption, 'publicly proclaimed the character of the gentleman in
question (I think it was in Westminster Hall) in terms which relieve me
from the necessity of making any further allusion to him. You may
have been warranted; you may not have been; I can't say. Assuming the
gentleman to be what you described, and to have made to you or any other
person any statements that may have happened to suggest themselves to
him, for the sake of his own security, or for the sake of money, or for
his own amusement, or for any other consideration,--I have nothing to
say of him, except that his extremely degrading situation appears to me
to be shared with his employers. You are so very plain yourself, that
you will excuse a little freedom in me, I am sure.'

'Attend to me again, Sir John but once,' cried Mr Haredale; 'in your
every look, and word, and gesture, you tell me this was not your act. I
tell you that it was, and that you tampered with the man I speak of, and
with your wretched son (whom God forgive!) to do this deed. You talk of
degradation and character. You told me once that you had purchased the
absence of the poor idiot and his mother, when (as I have discovered
since, and then suspected) you had gone to tempt them, and had found
them flown. To you I traced the insinuation that I alone reaped any
harvest from my brother's death; and all the foul attacks and whispered
calumnies that followed in its train. In every action of my life, from
that first hope which you converted into grief and desolation, you have
stood, like an adverse fate, between me and peace. In all, you have ever
been the same cold-bl