My dear young lady, your ignorance of the world
spoils your compliment. The worst man, the biggest criminal I ever saw
in the dock, looked as innocent as a baby."
"All the same, I don't believe you," Celia declared, doggedly.
"I am sorry to say the court is not with you," he said, with a smile
that did not hide his bitterness. "The cheque was cashed by the
prisoner--myself, my lord.--You see, I accept you as judge.--When he was
asked to give an account of it, he refused to do so; I am speaking in
the past tense, but I am merely forecasting the course of the trial. A
man who cashes a forged cheque and declines to say where he got it, how
it came into his possession, is quickly disposed of by a British jury,
than which there is no body of men more acute and intelligent."
"Why do you refuse to tell the truth and clear yourself?" asked Celia,
in a low voice, her lips parted now, with a perplexity, a vivid
interest.
He rose, strode up and down the room for a moment or two, then came back
to the table, and, with his hands pressing hard on it, looked down at
her upturned, anxious face.
"Your belief, your persistent, unreasoning belief in me, upsets me," he
said, with a smile, and evidently still making an effort to retain his
assumption of cynical indifference and levity. "I am strongly tempted by
it to tell you 'my story,' as the bores on the stage say; but I can't.
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