"Fiend!" shouted the Protector, grasping in his great anger the throat
of Sir Willmott, and shaking him as he had been a reed--"'tis a false
lie! He is no murderer; and if he had been, is it before his daughter
that ye would speak it! Hah! I see it all now. Such is the threat--the
lie--that gave you power over this excellence." He threw the ruffian
from him with a perfect majesty of resentment. Gross as was the deed,
the Protector condescending to throttle such as Burrell, the manner of
the act was great: it was that of an avenging angel, not of an angry or
impetuous man.
Sir Willmott regained his self-possession, although with feelings of
wounded pride and indignation; fixing his eye upon Constantia with, if
possible, increasing malignity, he spoke:-"His Highness much honours his subject; but Mistress Cecil herself knows
that what I have spoken is true--so does her father--and so does also
this man! Is it not true, I ask?"
"No! I say it is false--false as hell!" answered the Buccaneer; "and if
his Highness permits, I will explain."
"You say--what?" inquired Constantia, her whole countenance and figure
dilating with that hope which had so long been a stranger to her bosom.
"I say that Robert Cecil is no murderer! Stand forth, Walter Cecil, and
state that within the two last years, you saw your father in a Spanish
monastery; and that----"
"Who is Walter Cecil?" inquired Burrell, struggling as a drowning man,
while losing his last hope of salvation.
"I am WALTER CECIL!" exclaimed our old acquaintance Walter; "my nom de
guerre is no longer necessary."
"It needed not that one should come from the dead to tell us that," said
the Protector, impatiently; "but there are former passages we would have
explained. What means the villain by his charge? Speak, Dalton, and
unravel us this mystery."
"It is well known to your Highness, that few loved the former powers
more than Sir Herbert Cecil; and truth to say, he was wild, and daring,
and bad----"
"Dalton!" exclaimed the young man, in an upbraiding tone.
"Well, young master, I will say no more about it. Gold is a great
tempter, as your Highness knows; and it tempted yonder gentleman, with
whom God has dealt. He is a different sight to look upon now, to what he
was the morning he sought me to commit a crime, which, well for my own
sake, and the sake of others, I did not commit. He came to me----"