“Lambert!” he said gruffly, “listen to me....  Your conduct hath been most unseemly....  Mistress Endicott has for my sake, already shown you much kindness and forbearance ...  Had she acted as she had the right to do, she would have had you kicked out of the house by her servants....  In your own interests now I should advise you to follow me quietly out of the house....”

But this suggestion raised a hot protest on the part of all the spectators.

“He shall not go!” declared Segrave violently.

“Not without leaving behind him what he has deliberately stolen,” commented Endicott, raising his oily voice above the din.

Lambert had waited patiently, whilst his employer spoke.  The last remnant of that original sense of deference and of gratitude caused him to hold himself in check lest he should strike that treacherous coward in the face.  Sir Marmaduke’s callousness in the face of his peril and unmerited disgrace, had struck Lambert with an overwhelming feeling of disappointment and loneliness.  But his cruel insults now quashed despair and roused dormant indignation to fever pitch.  One look at Sir Marmaduke’s sneering face had told him not only that he could expect no help from the man who—­by all the laws of honor—­should have stood by him in his helplessness, but that he was the fount and source, the instigator of the terrible wrong and injustice which was about to land an innocent man in the veriest abyss of humiliation and irretrievable disgrace.

“And so this was your doing, Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse,” he said, looking his triumphant enemy boldly in the face, even whilst compelling silent attention from those who were heaping opprobrious epithets upon him.  “You enticed me here....  You persuaded me to play, ...  Then you tried to rob me of mine honor, of my good name, the only valuable assets which I possess....  Hell and all its devils alone know why you did this thing, but I swear before God that your hideous crime shall not remain unpunished....”

“Silence!” commanded Sir Marmaduke, who was the first to perceive the strange, almost supernatural, effect produced on all those present, by the young man’s earnestness, his impressive calm.  Segrave himself stood silent and abashed, whilst everyone listened, unconsciously awed by that unmistakable note of righteousness which somehow rang through Lambert’s voice.

“Nay! but I’ll not be silent,” quoth Richard unperturbed.  “I have been condemned ... and I have the right to speak....  You have disgraced me ... and I have the right to defend mine honor ... by protesting mine innocence....  And now I will leave this house,” he added loudly and firmly, “for it is accursed and infamous ... but God is my witness that I leave it without a stain upon my soul....”

He pointed to the fateful table whereon a pile of gold lay scattered in an untidy heap, with the tiny leather wallet containing his five guineas conspicuously in its midst.