Cashel's lips moved, but no sound came from them; he followed
Bashville in silence. When they entered the library Lydia was
already there. Bashville withdrew without a word. Then Cashel sat
down, and, to her consternation, bent his head on his hand and
yielded to an hysterical convulsion. Before she could resolve how to
act he looked up at her with his face distorted and discolored, and
tried to speak.
"Pray be calm," said Lydia. "I am told that you wish to speak to
me."
"I don't wish to speak to you ever again," said Cashel, hoarsely.
"You told your servant to throw me down the steps. That's enough for
me."
Lydia caught from him the tendency to sob which he was struggling
with; but she repressed it, and answered, firmly, "If my servant has
been guilty of the least incivility to you, Mr. Cashel Byron, he has
exceeded his orders."
"It doesn't matter," said Cashel. "He may thank his luck that he has
his head on. If I had planted on him that time--but HE doesn't
matter. Hold on a bit--I can't talk--I shall get my second wind
presently, and then--" Cashel stopped a moment to pant, and then
asked, "Why are you going to give me up?"
Lydia ranged her wits in battle array, and replied, "Do you remember our conversation at Mrs. Hoskyn's?"
"Yes."
"You admitted then that if the nature of your occupation became
known to me our acquaintance should cease. That has now come to
pass."
"That was all very fine talk to excuse my not telling you. But I
find, like many another man when put to the proof, that I didn't
mean it. Who told you I was a fighting man?"
"I had rather not tell you that."
"Aha!" said Cashel, with a triumph that was half choked by the
remnant of his hysteria. "Who is trying to make a secret now, I
should like to know?"
"I do so in this instance because I am afraid to expose a friend to
your resentment."
"And why? He's a man, of course; else you wouldn't be afraid. You
think that I'd go straight off and murder him. Perhaps he told you
that it would come quite natural to a man like me--a ruffian like
me--to smash him up. That comes of being a coward. People run my
profession down; not because there is a bad one or two in
it--there's plenty of bad bishops, if you come to that--but because
they're afraid of us. You may make yourself easy about your friend.
I am accustomed to get well paid for the beatings I give; and your
own common-sense ought to tell you that any one who is used to being
paid for a job is just the last person in the world to do it for
nothing."