es, and his regard met calmly and unflinchingly the looks
fastened on him; but the nerves of his lips twitched, his face was
haggard as by a night's deep gambling; there was a heavy dew on his
forehead--it was not the face of a wholly guiltless, of a wholly
unconscious man; often even as innocence may be unwittingly betrayed
into what wears the semblance of self-condemnation.

"And yet you equally persist in refusing to account for your occupation
of the early evening hours of the 15th? Unfortunate!"

"I do; but in your account of them you lie!"

There was a sternness inflexible as steel in the brief sentence. Under
it for an instant, though not visibly, Baroni flinched; and a fear of
the man he accused smote him, more deep, more keen than that with which
the sweeping might of the Seraph's fury had moved him. He knew now why
Ben Davis had hated with so deadly a hatred the latent strength that
slept under the Quietist languor and nonchalance of "the d----d Guards'
swell."

What he felt, however, did not escape him by the slightest sign.

"As a matter of course you deny it!" he said, with a polite wave of his
hand. "Quite right; you are not required to criminate yourself. I wish
sincerely we were not compelled to criminate you."

The Seraph's grand, rolling voice broke in; he had stood chafing,
chained, panting in agonies of passion and of misery.

"M. Baroni!" he said hotly, the furious vehemence of his anger and his
bewilderment obscuring in him all memory of either law or fact, "you
have heard his signature and your statements alike denied once for
all by Mr. Cecil. Your document is a libel and a conspiracy, like your
charge; it is false, and you are swindling; it is an outrage, and you
are a scoundrel; you have schemed this infamy for the sake of extortion;
not a sovereign will you obtain through it. Were the accusation you dare
to make true, I am the only one whom it can concern, since it is my name
which is involved. Were it true--could it possibly be true--I should
forbid any steps to be taken in it; I should desire it ended once and
forever. It shall be so now, by God!"

He scarcely knew what he was saying; yet what he did say, utterly as it
defied all checks of law or circumstance, had so gallant a ring, had so
kingly a wrath, that it awed and impressed even Baroni in the instant of
its utterance.

"They say that those fine gentlemen fight like a thousand lions when
they are once roused," he thought. "I