Page:Once a Week Dec 1860 to June 61.pdf/349

 338 if I do not learn it in your next words I will shake the answer out of you, or the life out of your body. Is that plain speaking, my man?”

“Useless violence, because I am as ready to tell as you are to hear. But will you request Mrs. Urquhart to withdraw?”

“No, sir,” replied Urquhart in a fierce voice. “I have to judge her conduct, and I choose to have her presence.”

“Then the fault is not mine if her feelings are wounded by what I must say to you.”

“Hold your d—d tongue about feelings, and speak the truth at once,” thundered Urquhart, “or it will be the worse for you.”

“Your violence is cowardly, Mr. Urquhart,” said Adair, with spirit. “Your personal strength is double my own, and I am unarmed, and if you choose to be brutal, strike. Else, hear me.”

And he folded his arms, and calmly confronted his gigantic companion.

“What hinders me to hear you,” returned Urquhart, “but yourself.” The display of courage in the undeniable presence of extreme peril produced its invariable effect upon a brave nature, and his tone, though stern, was somewhat less menacing. “Go on, sir.”

“Mrs. Urquhart is here to entreat that I, who hold in my hands the means of exposing an unworthy person, will refrain from doing so.”

“And who is the unworthy person who has the good fortune to enlist the sympathies of my wife? Silence, sir. I ask that question of her.”

“When you hear,” said Adair, promptly, “you will be glad not to have forced the name from her lips. The name is that of her sister.”

Robert Urquhart looked at his wife, who was swaying herself, after her custom in distress, backwards and forwards in her chair, and he saw by her piteous tremor, that he was hearing the truth.

An oath escaped him, and he strode to the window, where he stood for a few moments in silence. If Bertha tried to steal a glance at the face of Adair, it was unnoticed, for he stood with folded arms, and with his look immoveably fixed on the wall.

“I guessed that there was some shameful story to tell,” said Robert Urquhart, turning round to them, “but I did not guess that my own wife would dare to mix herself in sin and shame. But that she and I will speak of elsewhere. What is this secret, sir?”

“To reveal it to you, Mr. Urquhart, is to refuse the petition which you heard Mrs. Urquhart making to me.”

“Petition,” repeated Urquhart, furiously. “My wife stooping to petition anything from any man, and above all, petitioning that he will screen a worthless woman. It is my demand, sir, and it is hers,” he added, in a tone of authority, “that I hear the truth on this instant. Are you the—the lover of the woman who is to be screened?”

“If I were, Mr. Urquhart, and my life or death were in your hands, you would hear no word from me.”

“That swagger means that you are not. Who is?”

“It suits me to tell you in my own way, and in no other. It may occur to you on reflection that a man who has no fear may choose his own course. In my turn I demand that Mrs. Urquhart withdraw.”

He seated himself on the bed, and was so clearly resolved to be silent unless his demand were complied with, that Urquhart—after giving one savage thought to the expediency of violence—was not sorry that Bertha spoke.

“Yes—let me go, Robert—and come home to me directly, or I shall die.”

She looked so white, and so helpless, and so sad, that Urquhart could not but compassionate her.

“Wait for me in the walk below,” he said. “I do not know that we shall meet at home again. If you are not waiting for me, we never shall.”

Bertha trembled from the room, and then Urquhart, advancing to Adair, said,

“Now, sir, his name.”

“His name is on a tombstone, Mr. Urquhart.”

“Do you mean that he is dead, man?”

“He is dead.”

“And is it his death that brought her over to France?”

“In part. But she had other objects which I cannot explain, but which those who are interested in the matter may discover for themselves. My share in it will be a small one, but I owe a duty to the dead, and I intend to discharge it, in spite of Mrs. Urquhart’s tears, and notwithstanding your menaces.” I

“You know this dead scoundrel, then?”

“He was no scoundrel, and he was my friend. Use your own common sense as to the policy of such language when you wish for information.”

“Well, sir, what more? I suppose you have proofs of what you say?”

“You would have asked for them long since, if you had not been prepared to believe what I have to say. We may speak freely, Mr. Urquhart. I am, unhappily, well acquainted with many circumstances which you suppose to be unknown out of your family, and I am aware that you have reason to wish that Mrs. Arthur Lygon were not one of you.”

“How do you know this?” said Urquhart, darkly.

“Do not suppose for a moment that I have information from Mrs. Urquhart—if that thought is in your mind, dispel it. I have perfect knowledge, from other sources, of all that takes place under your roof, and many a roof beside. I tell you this frankly.”

“You are a spy?”

“If not, I have the means of commanding the services of persons of that class. If you doubt me, I will tell you of something which you have never told to any one, and which certainly Mrs. Urquhart could neither learn, nor comprehend if told to her.”

And he mentioned to Urquhart that the latter had, before returning from Paris, visited an obscure mechanic in a suburb, and gone though some experiments with him, for the purpose of testing the comparative power of resistance possessed by certain different kinds of manufactured iron.

“That shows how well the rascal work is done,”