"
"But you did not believe them!" Uncle Luke said. "You did not believe
them! I did owe Jasper Tuite five thousand guineas. It was a card debt.
I should have known better than to play with a man of his reputation;
but I repaid it, every penny. I have his receipt for it. What else,
father?"
"That there was a girl, a girl whom--I should not speak of such things
in Bawn's presence and your mother's--whom you had wronged. She had been
on the stage in Dublin, and she accounted for your extravagance at that
time. He said that Jasper Tuite came between you, tried to save the girl
from you. He said it would be a pretty case to go before a jury, that
you had cause, even more than the money, to hate Jasper Tuite and wish
him out of the way."
"And you believed it?"
I saw Lord St. Leger cower, and I said out of my pity and love for him--
"Uncle Luke, he is old, and you had left him He could not disprove the
things even if he did not believe them."
Uncle Luke's face changed. He looked down at his father.
"We will give him the lie together," he said; and then he noticed the
blood on the white hair and was terrified, till we assured him it was
nothing. "So little Bawn was the price of Garret Dawson's silence," he
said; and then added solemnly that he could never have forgiven himself
if the price had been paid.
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