e, you have an opportunity of declaring
on the ground your perfect innocence of the charge; at least, such,
I fancy, would be what I should do, in a like event. I would say, 'My
Lord, it is your pleasure, under a very grave and great misconception,
to desire to take my life. I have stood here for you once, and will do
so again, as many times as you please, till either your vengeance be
satisfied or your error recognized; simply repeating, as I now do, that
I am innocent.' In this way you will show that personal risk is nothing
with you in comparison with the assertion of a fact that regards another
far more nearly than yourself. I will not dispute with you which line is
the better one; but, so much will I say, This is what 'the World' would
look for."

The word was a spell! Cashel felt himself in a difficulty perfectly
novel; he was, as it were, arraigned to appear before a court of whose
proceedings he knew little or nothing. How "the World" would regard
the affair, was the whole question,--what "the World" would say of Lady
Kilgoff,--how receive her exculpation. Now Linton assuredly knew this
same "World" well; he knew it in its rare moods of good-humor, when it
is pleased to speak its flatteries to some popular idol of the hour;
and he knew it in its more congenial temper, when it utters its fatal
judgments on unproved delinquency and imputed wrong.

None knew better than himself the course by which the "Holy Office" of
slander disseminates its decrees, and he had often impressed Roland with
a suitable awe of its mysterious doings. The word was, then, talismanic;
for, however at the bar of Conscience he might stand acquitted, Cashel
knew that it was to another and very different jurisdiction the appeal
should be made. Linton saw what was passing in his mind, for he had
often watched him in similar conflicts, and he hastened to press his
advantage.

"Understand me well, Cashel; I do not pretend to say that this is the
common-sense solution of such a difficulty; nor is it the mode which a
man with frankness of character and honorable intentions would perhaps
have selected; but it is the way in which the world will expect to see
it treated, and any deviation from which would be regarded as a solecism
in our established code of conduct."

"In what position will it place _her?_ That's the only question worth
considering."

"Perfect exculpation. You, as I said before, receive Kilgoff's fire, and
protest your entire i