ve been
worse to face even than his comrade's wrath; it died, however, well-nigh
instantly, repressed by a marvelous strength of control, whatever its
motive. He was simply, as he had been throughout, passive--so passive
that even Ezra Baroni, who knew what the Seraph never dreamed, looked at
him in wonder, and felt a faint, sickly fear of that singular, unbroken
calm. It perplexed him--the first thing which had ever done so in his
own peculiar paths of finesse and of intrigue.

The one placed in ignorance between them, at once as it were the judge
and champion of his brother-at-arms, felt wild and blind under this
unutterable shame, which seemed to net them both in such close and
hopeless meshes. He, heir to one of the greatest coronets in the world,
must see his friend branded as a common felon, and could do no more to
aid or to avenge him than if he were a charcoal-burner toiling yonder in
the pine woods! His words were hoarse and broken as he spoke:

"Cecil, tell me--what is to be done? This infamous outrage cannot pass!
cannot go on! I will send for the Duke, for--"

"Send for no one."

Bertie's voice was slightly weaker, like that of a man exhausted by a
long struggle, but it was firm and very quiet. Its composure fell on
Rockingham's tempestuous grief and rage with a sickly, silencing
awe, with a terrible sense of some evil here beyond his knowledge and
ministering, and of an impotence alike to act and to serve, to defend
and to avenge--the deadliest thing his fearless life had ever known.

"Pardon me, my lord," interposed Baroni, "I can waste time no more. You
must be now convinced yourself of your friend's implication in this very
distressing affair."

"I!" The Seraph's majesty of haughtiest amaze and scorn blazed from his
azure eyes on the man who dared say this thing to him. "I! If you dare
hint such a damnable shame to my face again, I will wring your neck with
as little remorse as I would a kite's. I believe in his guilt? Forgive
me, Cecil, that I can even repeat the word! I believe in it? I would as
soon believe in my own disgrace--in my father's dishonor!"

"How will your lordship account, then, for Mr. Cecil's total inability
to tell us know he spent the hours between six and nine on the 15th?"

"Unable? He is not unable; he declines! Bertie, tell me what you did
that one cursed evening. Whatever it was, wherever it was, say it for my
sake, and shame this devil."

Cecil would more willingly hav