|
||||||||
you two should have together) as he has been to all others. With hints, and looks, and crafty words, which told again are nothing, you set on Gashford to this workthis work before us now. With these same hints, and looks, and crafty words, which told again are nothing, you urged him on to gratify the deadly hate he owes meI have earned it, I thank Heavenby the abduction and dishonour of my niece. You did. I see denial in your looks, he cried, abruptly pointing in his face, and stepping back, and denial is a lie! He had his hand upon his sword; but the knight, with a contemptuous smile, replied to him as coldly as before. You will take notice, sirif 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 dont 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 cant 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 brothers 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-blooded, hollow, false, unworthy villain. For the second time, and for the last, I cast these charges in your teeth, and spurn you from me as I would a faithless dog! With that he raised his arm, and struck him on the breast so that he staggered. Sir John, the instant he recovered, drew his sword, threw away the scabbard and his hat, and running on his adversary made a desperate lunge at his heart, which, but that his guard was quick and true, would have stretched him dead upon the grass. In the act of striking him, the torrent of his opponents rage had reached a stop. He parried his rapid thrusts, without returning them, and called to him, with a frantic kind of terror in his face, to keep back. Not to-night! not to-night! he cried. In Gods name, not tonight! Seeing that he lowered his weapon, and that he would not thrust in turn, Sir John lowered his. Not to-night! his adversary cried. Be warned in time! You told meit must have been in a sort of inspiration said Sir John, quite deliberately, though now he dropped his mask, and showed his hatred in his face, that this was the last time. Be assured it is! |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
Copyright: All texts on Bibliomania are © Bibliomania.com Ltd, and may not be reproduced in any form without our written permission. See our FAQ for more details. | ||||||||