alverley--"this thing is you!"

"A helpless reptile now," said Ufford. "I have not the power to check
Lord Umfraville in his vengeance. You must be publicly disgraced, and
must, I think, be hanged even now when it will not benefit me at all.
It may be I shall weep for that some day! Or else Honoria must die,
because an archangel could not persuade her to desert you in your
peril. For she loves you--loves you to the full extent of her merry
and shallow nature. Oh, I know that, as you will never know it. I
shall have killed Honoria! I shall not weep when Honoria dies.
Harkee, Robin! they are dancing yonder. It is odd to think that I
shall never dance again."

"Horace--!" the younger man said, like a person of two minds. He
seemed to choke. He gave a frantic gesture. "Oh, I have loved you. I
have loved nothing as I have loved you."

"And yet you chatter of your passion for Honoria!" Lord Ufford
returned, with a snarl. "I ask what proof is there of this?--Why, that
you have surrendered your well-being in this world through love of her.
But I gave what is vital. I was an honorable gentleman without any act
in all my life for which I had need to blush. I loved you as I loved
no other being in the universe." He spread his hands, which now
twitched horribly. "You will never understand. It does not matter. I
desired Honoria. To-day through my desire of her, I am that monstrous
thing which you alone know me to be. I think I gave up much. _Pro
honoria!_" he chuckled. "The Latin halts, but, none the less, the jest
is excellent."

"You have given more than I would dare to give," said Calverley. He
shuddered.

"And to no end!" cried Ufford. "Ah, fate, the devil and that code I
mocked are all in league to cheat me!"

Said Calverley: "The man whom I loved most is dead. Oh, had the world
been searched between the sunrise and the sunsetting there had not been
found his equal. And now, poor fool, I know that there was never any
man like this!"

"Nay, there was such a man," the poet said, "in an old time which I
almost forget. To-day he is quite dead. There is only a poor wretch
who has been faithless in all things, who has not even served the devil
faithfully."

"Why, then, you lackey with a lackey's soul, attend to what I say. Can
you make any terms with Umfraville?"

"I can do nothing," Ufford replied. "You have robbed him--as me--of
what he most desired. You have made him the laughing-stock