When Alec sat down, he rose, glanced round the assembly, bent
his lip into its most scornful curves, and, in a clear, unwavering
voice, said:
"Mr Chairman and gentlemen, I repel the accusation."
Alec started to his feet in wrath.
"Mr Forbes, sit down," bawled the chairman; and Alec obeyed, though
with evident reluctance.
"I say the accusation is false," repeated Beauchamp. "I do not say that
Mr Forbes consciously invented the calumny in order to take away my
character: such an assertion would preclude its own credence. Nor do I
venture to affirm that he never was stabbed, or thrown into the river.
But I ask any gentleman who happens to be aware of Mr Forbes's
devotions at the shrine of Father Lyaeus, which is the more
likely--that a fellow-student should stab and throw him into the water,
or that, as he was reeling home at midnight, the treacherous divinity
of the bowl should have handed him over to the embrace of his brother
deity of the river. Why then should even his imagination fix upon me as
the source of the injury? Gentlemen, a foolish attachment to the
customs of a long line of ancestors has led me into what I find for the
first time to be a dangerous habit--that of wearing arms;--dangerous, I
mean, to myself; for now I am wounded with my own weapon.
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