"I think you are too severe upon this kind of transgression, Cashel,"
said Linton, calmly. "It is as often prompted by mere idleness as malice. The great ma.s.s of people in this life have nothing to do, and they go wrong just for occupation. There may have been--there generally is--a little grain of truth amid all the chaff of fiction; there may, therefore, be a young lady whose name was--"
"I forbid you to speak it. I knew her, and, girl as she was, she was not one to suffer insult in her presence, nor shall it be offered to her in her absence."
"My dear fellow, your generous warmth should not be unjust, or else you will find few friends willing to incur your anger in the hope of doing you service. I never believed a word of this story.
Marriage--adventure--even the young lady"s ident.i.ty, I deemed all fictions together."
Cashel muttered something he meant to be apologetic for his rudeness, and Linton was not slow in accepting even so unwilling a reparation.
"Of course I think no more of it," cried he, with affected cordiality.
"I was going to tell you how Lady Kilgoff received the tidings--exactly the very opposite to what her kind correspondent had intended. It actually seemed to encourage her in her pa.s.sion, as though there was a similarity in your cases. Besides, she felt, perhaps, that she was not damaging your future career, as it might be a.s.serted she had done, were you unmarried. These are mere guesses on my part. I own to you, I have little skill in reading the Machiavellism of a female heart; the only key to its mystery I know of is, "always suspect what is least likely.""
"And I am to sit down patiently under all this calumny!" said Cashel, as he walked the room with hasty steps. "I am perhaps to receive at my table those whose amus.e.m.e.nt it is so to sport with my character and my fame!"
"It is a very naughty world, no doubt of it," said Linton, lighting a fresh cigar; "and the worst of it is, it tempts one always to be as roguish as one"s neighbors for self-preservation."
"You say I am not at liberty to speak of this letter to Lady Kilgoff?"
"Of course not; I am myself a defaulter in having told the matter to you."
Cashel paced the room hurriedly; and what a whirlwind of opposing thoughts rushed through his brain! for while at times all Lady Kilgoff s warnings about Linton, all his own suspicions of his duplicity and deceit, were uppermost, there was still enough in Linton"s narrative, were it true, to account for Lady Kilgoff"s hatred of him. The counsels _he_ had given, and _she_ rejected, were enough to furnish a feud forever between them. At which side lay the truth? And then, this letter about Maritana,--who was the writer? Could it be Linton himself? and if so, would he have ventured to allude to it?
These thoughts hara.s.sed and distressed him at every instant, and in his present feeling towards Linton he could not ask his aid to solve the mystery.
Now, he was half disposed to charge him with the whole slander; his pa.s.sion prompted him to seek an object for his vengeance, and the very cool air of indifference Linton a.s.sumed was provocative of anger. The next moment, he felt ashamed of such intemperate warmth, and almost persuaded himself to tell him of his proposal for Mary Leicester, and thus prove the injustice of the suspicion about Lady Kilgoff.
"There"s a tap at the door, I think," said Linton. "I suppose, if it"s Frobisher, or any of them, you"d rather not be bored?" And, as if divining the answer, he arose and opened it.
"Lord Kilgoff"s compliments, and requests Mr. Linton will come over to his room," said his Lordship"s valet.
"Very well," said Linton, and closed the door. "What can the old peer want at this time of night? Am I to bring a message to you, Cashel?"
Cashel gave an insolent laugh.
"Or shall I tell him the story of Davoust at Hamburg, when the Syndicate accused him of peculating, and mentioned some millions that he had abstracted from the treasury. "All untrue, gentlemen," said he; "I never heard of the money before, but since you have been polite enough to mention the fact, I "ll not show myself so ungrateful as to forget it."
Do you think Kilgoff would see the _a propos?_"
With this speech, uttered in that half-jocular mood habitual to him, Linton left the room, while Cashel continued to ponder over the late scene, and its probable consequences; not the least serious of which was, that Linton was possessor of his secrets. Now thinking upon what he had just heard of Lady Kilgoff, now picturing to himself how Mary Leicester would regard his pledge to Maritana, he walked impatiently up and down, when the door opened, and Linton appeared.
"Just as I surmised!" said he, throwing himself into a chair, and laughing heartily. "My Lord will be satisfied with nothing but a duel _a mort_."
"I see no cause for mirth in such a contingency," said Cashel, gravely; "the very rumor of it would ruin Lady Kilgoff."
"That of course is a grave consideration," said Linton, affecting seriousness; "but it is still more his than yours."
"_He_ is a dotard!" said Cashel, pa.s.sionately, "and not to be thought of; _she_ is young, beautiful, and unprotected. Her fortune is a hard one already, nor is there any need to make it still more cruel."
"I half doubt she would think it so!" said Linton, with an air of levity, as he stooped to select a cigar.
"How do you mean, sir?" cried Cashel, angrily.
"Why, simply that, when you shoot my Lord, you"ll scarcely desert my Lady," said he, with the same easy manner.
"You surely told him that his suspicions were unfounded and unjust; that my intimacy, however prompted by the greatest admiration, had never transgressed the line of respect?"
"Of course, my dear fellow, I said a thousand things of you that I did n"t believe--and, worse still, neither did he; but the upshot of all is, that he fancies it is a question between the peerage and the great unt.i.tled cla.s.s; he has got it into his wise brain that the barons of Runnymede will rise from their monumental marble in horror and shame at such an invasion of "the order;" and that there will be no longer security beneath the coronet when such a domestic Jack Cade as yourself goes at large."
"I tell you again, Linton,--and let it be for the last time,--your pleasantry is most ill-timed. I cannot, I will not, gratify this old man"s humor, and make myself ridiculous to pamper his absurd vanity.
Besides, to throw a slander upon his wife, he must seek another instrument."
By accident, mere accident, Cashel threw a more than usual significance into these last few words; and Linton, whose command over his features rarely failed, taken suddenly by what seemed a charge, grew deep red.
Cashel started as he saw the effect of his speech; he was like one who sees his chance shot has exploded a magazine.
"What!" cried he, "have you a grudge in that quarter, and is it thus you would pay it?"
"I hope you mean this in jest, Cashel?" said Linton, with a voice of forced calm.
"Faith, I never was less in a mood for joking; my words have only such meaning as your heart accuses you of."
"Come, come, then there is no harm done. But pray, be advised, and never say as much to any one who has less regard for you. And now, once more, what shall we do with Kilgoff? He has charged me to carry you a message, and I only undertook the mission in the hope of some accommodation,--something that should keep the whole affair strictly amongst ourselves."
"Then you wish for my answer?"
"Of course."
"It is soon said. I "ll not meet him."
"Not meet him? But just consider--"
"I _have_ considered, and I tell you once more I "ll not meet him. He cannot lay with truth any injury at my door; and I will not, to indulge his petulant vanity, be led to injure one whose fair fame is of more moment than our absurd differences."
"I own to you, Cashel, this does not strike me as a wise course. By going out and receiving his fire, 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 a.s.sertion 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 a.s.suredly 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 pa.s.sing 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 innocence; my Lord accepts your a.s.surance, and goes home to breakfast--_voila tout!_"
"What an absurd situation! I declare to you I shrink from the ridicule that must attach to such a _rencontre_, meeting a man of his age and infirmity!"
"They make pistols admirably now-a-days," said Linton, dryly; "even the least athletic can pull a hair-trigger."