; but a vague dread hushed his
impetuous vehemence. The dignity of the old Lyonnesse blood asserted its
ascendency.

"M. Baroni, make your statement. Later on Mr. Cecil can avenge it."

Cecil never moved; once his eyes went to Rockingham with a look of
yearning, grateful, unendurable pain; but it was repressed instantly; a
perfect passiveness was on him. The Jew smiled.

"My statement is easily made, and will not be so new to this gentleman
as it was to your lordship. I simply charge the Honorable Bertie Cecil
with having negotiated a bill with my firm for 750 pounds on the 15th of
last month, drawn in his own favor, and accepted at two months' date
by your lordship. Your signature you, my Lord Marquis, admit to be a
forgery--with that forgery I charge your friend!"

"The 15th!"

The echo of those words alone escaped the dry, white lips of Cecil; he
showed no amaze, no indignation; once only, as the charge was made, he
gave in sudden gesture, with a sudden gleam, so dark, so dangerous, in
his eyes, that his comrade thought and hoped that with one moment more
the Jew would be dashed down at his feet with the lie branded on his
mouth by the fiery blow of a slandered and outraged honor. The action
was repressed; the extraordinary quiescence, more hopeless because more
resigned than any sign of pain or of passion, returned either by force
of self-control or by the stupor of despair.

The Seraph gazed at him with a fixed, astounded horror; he could not
believe his senses; he could not realize what he saw. His dearest friend
stood mute beneath the charge of lowest villainy--stood powerless before
the falsehoods of a Jew extortioner!

"Bertie! Great Heaven!" he cried, well-nigh beside himself, "how can
you stand silent there? Do you hear--do you hear aright? Do you know
the accursed thing this conspiracy has tried to charge you with? Say
something, for the love of God! I will have vengeance on your slanderer,
if you take none."

He had looked for the rise of the same passion that rang in his own
imperious words, for the fearless wrath of an insulted gentleman, the
instantaneous outburst of a contemptuous denial, the fire of scorn, the
lightning flash of fury--all that he gave himself, all that must be so
naturally given by a slandered man under the libel that brands him with
disgrace. He had looked for these as surely as he looked for the setting
of one sun and the rise of another; he would have staked his life on the