“I don’t doubt your will or your strength, my lord; but neither do I doubt the force of the law to make you account for any brutality of the prize-ring your lordship may please to exert on me.”

The Seraph ground his heel into the carpet.

“We waste words on that wretch,” he said abruptly to Cecil.  “Prove his insolence the lie it is, and we will deal with him later on.”

“Precisely what I said, my lord,” murmured Baroni.  “Let Mr. Cecil prove his innocence.”

Into Bertie’s eyes came a hunted, driven desperation.  He turned them on Rockingham with a look that cut him to the heart; yet the abhorrent thought crossed him—­was it thus that men guiltless looked?

“Mr. Cecil was with my partner at 7:50 on the evening of the 15th.  It was long over business hours, but my partner to oblige him stretched a point,” pursued the soft, bland, malicious voice of the German Jew.  “If he was not at our office—­where was he?  That is simple enough.”

“Answered in a moment!” said the Seraph, with impetuous certainty.  “Cecil!—­to prove this man what he is, not for an instant to satisfy me—­where were you at that time on the 15th?”

“The 15th!”

“Where were you?” pursued his friend.  “Were you at mess?  At the clubs?  Dressing for dinner?—­where—­where?  There must be thousands of ways of remembering—­thousands of people who’ll prove it for you?”

Cecil stood mute still; his teeth clinched on his under lip.  He could not speak—­a woman’s reputation lay in his silence.

“Can’t you remember?” implored the Seraph.  “You will think—­you must think!”

There was a feverish entreaty in his voice.  That hunted helplessness with which a question so slight yet so momentous was received, was forcing in on him a thought that he flung away like an asp.

Cecil looked both of them full in the eyes—­both his accuser and his friend.  He was held as speechless as though his tongue were paralyzed; he was bound by his word of honor; he was weighted with a woman’s secret.

“Don’t look at me so, Bertie, for mercy’s sake!  Speak!  Where were you?”

“I cannot tell you; but I was not there.”

The words were calm; there was a great resolve in them, moreover; but his voice was hoarse and his lips shook.  He paid a bitter price for the butterfly pleasure of a summer-day love.

“Cannot tell me!—­cannot?  You mean you have forgotten!”

“I cannot tell you; it is enough.”

There was an almost fierce and sullen desperation in the answer; its firmness was not shaken, but the ordeal was terrible.  A woman’s reputation—­a thing so lightly thrown away with an idler’s word, a Lovelace’s smile!—­that was all he had to sacrifice to clear himself from the toils gathering around him.  That was all!  And his word of honor.

Baroni bent his head with an ironic mockery of sympathy.

“I feared so, my lord.  Mr. Cecil ‘cannot tell.’  As it happens, my partner can tell.  Mr. Cecil was with him at the hour and on the day I specify; and Mr. Cecil transacted with him the bill that I have had the honor of showing you—­”