The intense malignity, the brutal hungry lust for vengeance that inspired the words, lent their coarse vulgarity something that was for the moment almost tragical in its strength; almost horrible in its passion. Ezra Baroni looked at him quietly, then without another word went out—to a congenial task.

“Dat big child is a fool,” mused the subtler and gentler Jew. “Vengeance is but de breath of de vind; it blow for you one day, it blow against you de next; de only real good is monish.”

The Seraph had ridden back from Iffesheim to the Bad in company with some Austrian officers, and one or two of his own comrades. He had left the Course late, staying to exhaust every possible means of inquiry as to the failure of Forest King, and to discuss with other members of the Newmarket and foreign jockey clubs the best methods—if method there were—of discovering what foul play had been on foot with the horse. That there was some, and very foul too, the testimony of men and angels would not have dissuaded the Seraph; and the event had left him most unusually grave and regretful.

The amount he had lost himself, in consequence, was of not the slightest moment to him, although he was extravagant enough to run almost to the end even of his own princely tether in money matters; but that “Beauty” should be cut down was more vexatious to him than any evil accident that could have befallen himself, and he guessed pretty nearly the terrible influence the dead failure would have on his friend’s position.

True, he had never heard Cecil breathe a syllable that hinted at embarrassment; but these things get known with tolerable accuracy about town, and those who were acquainted, as most people in their set were, with the impoverished condition of the Royallieu exchequer, however hidden it might be under an unabated magnificence of living, were well aware also that none of the old Viscount’s sons could have any safe resources to guarantee them from as rapid a ruin as they liked to consummate. Indeed, it had of late been whispered that it was probable, despite the provisions of the entail, that all the green wealth and Norman Beauty of Royallieu itself would come into the market. Hence the Seraph, the best-hearted and most generous-natured of men, was worried by an anxiety and a despondency which he would never have indulged, most assuredly, on his own account, as he rode away from Iffesheim after the defeat of his Corps’ champion.

He was expected to dinner with one of the most lovely of foreign Ambassadresses, and was to go with her afterward to the Vaudeville, at the pretty golden theater, where a troupe from the Bouffes were playing; but he felt anything but in the mood for even her bewitching and—in an marriageable sense—safe society, as he stopped his horse at his own hotel, the Badischer Hof.

As he swung himself out of saddle, a well-dressed, quiet, rather handsome little man drew near respectfully, lifting his hat—it was M. Baroni. The Seraph had never seen the man in his life that he knew of, but he was himself naturally frank, affable, courteous, and never given to hedging himself behind the pale of his high rank; provided you did not bore him, you might always get access to him easily enough—the Duke used to tell him, too easily.

Therefore, when Ezra Baroni deferentially approached with, “The Most Noble the Marquis of Rockingham, I think?” the Seraph, instead of leaving the stranger there discomfited, nodded and paused with his inconsequent good nature; thinking how much less bosh it would be if everybody could call him, like his family and his comrades, “Rock.”

“That is my name,” he answered. “I do not know you. Do you want anything of me?”

The Seraph had a vivid terror of people who “wanted him,” in the subscription, not the police, sense of the word; and had been the victim of frauds innumerable.

“I wished,” returned Baroni respectfully, but with sufficient independence to conciliate his auditor, whom he saw at a glance cringing subservience would disgust, “to have the opportunity of asking your lordship a very simple question.”

The Seraph looked a little bored, a little amused.

“Well, ask it, my good fellow; you have your opportunity!” he said impatiently, yet good-humored still.

“Then would you, my lord,” continued the Jew with his strong Hebrew-German accent, “be so good as to favor me by saying whether this signature be your own?”

The Jew held before him a folded paper, so folded that one line only was visible, across which was dashed in bold characters, “Rockingham.”

The Seraph put up his eye-glass, stopped, and took a steadfast look; then shook his head.

“No; that is not mine; at least, I think not. Never made my R half a quarter so well in my life.”

“Many thanks, my lord,” said Baroni quietly. “One question more and we can substantiate the fact. Did your lordship indorse any bill on the 15th of last month?”

The Seraph looked surprised, and reflected a moment. “No, I didn’t,” he said after a pause. “I have done it for men, but not on that day; I was shooting at Hornsey Wood most of it, if I remember right. Why do you ask?”

“I will tell you, my lord, if you grant me a private interview.”

The Seraph moved away. “Never do that,” he said briefly; “private interviews,” thought he, acting on past experience, “with women always mean proposals, and with men always mean extortion.”

Baroni made a quick movement toward him.

“An instant, my lord! This intimately concerns yourself. The steps of an hotel are surely not the place in which to speak of it?”

“I wish to hear nothing about it,” replied Rock, putting him aside; while he thought to himself regretfully, “That is ‘stiff,’ that bit of paper; perhaps some poor wretch is in a scrape. I wish I hadn’t so wholly denied my signature. If the mischief’s done, there’s no good in bothering the fellow.”

The Seraph’s good nature was apt to overlook such trifles as the Law.

Baroni kept pace with him as he approached the hotel door, and spoke very low.

“My lord, if you do not listen, worse may befall the reputation both of your regiment and your friends.”

The Seraph swung round; his careless, handsome face set stern in an instant; his blue eyes grave, and gathering an ominous fire.

“Step yonder,” he said curtly, signing the Hebrew toward the grand staircase. “Show that person to my rooms, Alexis.”

But for the publicity of the entrance of the Badischer Hof the mighty right arm of the Guardsman might have terminated the interview then and there, in different fashion. Baroni had gained his point, and was ushered into the fine chambers set apart for the future Duke of Lyonnesse. The Seraph strode after him, and as the attendant closed the door and left them alone in the first of the great lofty suite, all glittering with gilding, and ormolu, and malachite, and rose velvet, and Parisian taste, stood like a tower above the Jew’s small, slight form; while his words came curtly, and only by a fierce effort through his lips.

“Substantiate what you dare to say, or my grooms shall throw you out of that window! Now!”

Baroni looked up, unmoved; the calm, steady, undisturbed glance sent a chill over the Seraph; he thought if this man came but for purposes of extortion, and were not fully sure that he could make good what he said, this was not the look he would give.

“I desire nothing better, my lord,” said Baroni quietly, “though I greatly regret to be the messenger of such an errand. This bill, which in a moment I will have the honor of showing you, was transacted by my house (I am one of the partners of a London discounting firm), indorsed thus by your celebrated name. Moneys were lent on it, the bill was made payable at two months’ date; it was understood that you accepted it; there could be no risk with such a signature as yours. The bill was negotiated; I was in Leyden, Lubeck, and other places at the period; I heard nothing of the matter. When I returned to London, a little less than a week ago, I saw the signature for the first time. I was at once aware that it was not yours, for I had some paid bills, signed by you, at hand, with which I compared it. Of course, my only remedy was to seek you out, although I was nearly certain, before your present denial, that the bill was a forgery.”

He spoke quite tranquilly still, with a perfectly respectful regret, but with the air of a man who has his title to be heard, and is acting simply in hie own clear right. The Seraph listened, restless, impatient, sorely tried to keep in the passion which had been awakened by the hint that this wretched matter could concern or attaint the honor of his corps.

“Well! speak out!” he said impatiently. “Details are nothing. Who drew it? Who forged my name, if it be forged? Quick! give me the paper.”

“With every trust and every deference, my lord, I cannot let the bill pass out of my own hands until this unfortunate matter be cleared up—if cleared up it can be. Your lordship shall see the bill, however, of course, spread here upon the table; but first, let me warn you, my Lord Marquis, that the sight will be intensely painful to you.

“Very painful, my lord,” added Baroni impressively. “Prepare yourself for—”

Rock dashed his hand down on the marble table with a force that made the lusters and statuettes on it ring and tremble.

“No more words! Lay the bill there.”

Baroni bowed and smoothed out upon the console the crumpled document, holding it with one hand, yet leaving visible with the counterfeited signature one other, the name of the forger in whose favor the bill was drawn; that other signature was—“Bertie Cecil.”

“I deeply regret to deal you such a blow from such a friend, my lord,” said the Jew softly. The Seraph stooped and gazed—one instant of horrified amazement kept him dumb there, staring at the written paper as at some ghastly thing; then all the hot blood rushed over his fair, bold face; he flung himself on the Hebrew, and, ere the other could have breath or warning, tossed him upward to the painted ceiling and hurled him down again upon the velvet carpet, as lightly as a retriever will catch up and let fall a wild duck or a grouse, and stood over Baroni where he lay.

“You hound!”

Baroni, lying passive and breathless with the violence of the shock and the surprise, yet kept, even amid the hurricane of wrath that had tossed him upward and downward as the winds toss leaves, his hold upon the document, and his clear, cool, ready self-possession.

“My lord,” he said faintly, “I do not wonder at your excitement, aggressive as it renders you; but I cannot admit that false which I know to be a for—”

“Silence! Say that word once more, and I shall forget myself and hurl you out into the street like the dog of a Jew you are!”

“Have patience an instant, my lord. Will it profit your friend and brother-in-arms if it be afterward said that when this charge was brought against him, you, my Lord Rockingham, had so little faith in his power to refute it that you bore down with all your mighty strength in a personal assault upon one so weakly as myself, and sought to put an end to the evidence against him by bodily threats against my safety, and by—what will look legally, my lord, like—an attempt to coerce me into silence and to obtain the paper from my hands by violence?”

Faint and hoarse the words were, but they were spoken with quiet confidence, with admirable acumen; they were the very words to lash the passions of his listener into unendurable fire, yet to chain them powerless down; the Guardsman stood above him, his features flushed and dark with rage, his eyes literally blazing with fury, his lips working under his tawny, leonine beard. At every syllable he could have thrown himself afresh upon the Jew and flung him out of his presence as so much carrion; yet the impotence that truth so often feels, caught and meshed in the coils of subtlety—the desperate disadvantage at which Right is so often placed, when met by the cunning science and sophistry of Wrong—held the Seraph in their net now. He saw his own rashness, he saw how his actions could be construed till they cast a slur even on the man he defended; he saw how legally he was in error, how legally the gallant vengeance of an indignant friendship might be construed into consciousness of guilt in the accused for whose sake the vengeance fell.

He stood silent, overwhelmed with the intensity of his own passion, baffled by the ingenuity of a serpent-wisdom he could not refute.

Ezra Baroni saw his advantage. He ventured to raise himself slightly.

“My lord, since your faith in your friend is so perfect, send for him. If he be innocent, and I a liar, with a look I shall be confounded.”

The tone was perfectly impassive, but the words expressed a world. For a moment the Seraph’s eyes flashed on him with a look that made him feel nearer his death than he had been near to it in all his days; but Rockingham restrained himself from force.

“I will send for him,” he said briefly; in that answer there was more of menace and of meaning than in any physical action.

He moved and let Baroni rise; shaken and bruised, but otherwise little seriously hurt, and still holding, in a tenacious grasp, the crumpled paper. He rang; his own servant answered the summons.

“Go to the Stephanien and inquire for Mr. Cecil. Be quick; and request him, wherever he be, to be so good as to come to me instantly—here.”

The servant bowed and withdrew; a perfect silence followed between these two so strangely assorted companions; the Seraph stood with his back against the mantelpiece, with every sense on the watch to catch every movement of the Jew’s, and to hear the first sound of Cecil’s approach. The minutes dragged on; the Seraph was in an agony of probation and impatience. Once the attendants entered to light the chandeliers and candelabra; the full light fell on the dark, slight form of the Hebrew, and on the superb attitude and the fair, frank, proud face of the standing Guardsman; neither moved—once more they were left alone.

The moments ticked slowly away one by one, audible in the silence. Now and then the quarter chimed from the clock; it was the only sound in the chamber.