It is a great power!' he cried with
sparkling eyes. 'But--dear Gashford--did I really say all that?'
'And how much more!' cried the secretary, looking upwards. 'Ah! how much
more!'
'And I told them what you say, about the one hundred and forty thousand
men in Scotland, did I!' he asked with evident delight. 'That was bold.'
'Our cause is boldness. Truth is always bold.'
'Certainly. So is religion. She's bold, Gashford?'
'The true religion is, my lord.'
'And that's ours,' he rejoined, moving uneasily in his seat, and biting
his nails as though he would pare them to the quick. 'There can be no
doubt of ours being the true one. You feel as certain of that as I do,
Gashford, don't you?'
'Does my lord ask ME,' whined Gashford, drawing his chair nearer with
an injured air, and laying his broad flat hand upon the table; 'ME,'
he repeated, bending the dark hollows of his eyes upon him with an
unwholesome smile, 'who, stricken by the magic of his eloquence in
Scotland but a year ago, abjured the errors of the Romish church, and
clung to him as one whose timely hand had plucked me from a pit?'
'True. No--No. I--I didn't mean it,' replied the other, shaking him by
the hand, rising from his seat, and pacing restlessly about the room.
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