“Can’t I!” He resumed: “How very simple, how confiding you must be, my dear Langhetti! Let me explain my meaning. You got up a wild charge against a gentleman of character and position about a murder. In the first place, you seem to forget that the real murderer has long since been punished. That miserable devil of a Malay was very properly convicted at Manilla, and hanged there. It was twenty years ago. What English court would consider the case again after a calm and impartial Spanish court has settled it finally, and punished the criminal? They did so at the time when the case was fresh, and I came forth honored and triumphant. You now bring forward a man who, you hint, will make statements against me. Suppose he does? What then? Why, I will show what this man is. And you, my dear Langhetti, will be the first one whom I will bring up against him. I will bring you up under oath, and make you tell how this Cigole--this man who testifies against me--once made a certain testimony in Sicily against a certain Langhetti senior, by which that certain Langhetti senior was betrayed to the Government, and was saved only by the folly of two Englishmen, one of whom was this same Despard. I will show that this Langhetti senior was your father, and that the son, instead of avenging, or at any rate resenting, his father’s wrong, is now a bosom friend of his father’s intended murderer--that he has urged him on against me. I will show, my dear Langhetti, how you have led a roving life, and, when a drum-major at Hong Kong, won the affections of my daughter; how you followed her here, and seduced her away from a kind father; how at infinite risk I regained her; how you came to me with audacious threats; and how only the dread of further scandal, and my own anxious love for my daughter, prevented me from handing you over to the authorities. I will prove you to be a scoundrel of the vilest description, and, after such proof as this, what do you think would be the verdict of an English jury, or of any judge in any land; and what do you think would be your own fate? Answer me that.” Potts spoke with savage vehemence. The frightful truth flashed at once across Langhetti’s mind that Potts had it in his power here to show all this to the world. He was overwhelmed. He had never conceived the possibility of this. Potts watched him silently, with a sneer on his face. “Don’t you think that you had better go and comfort yourself with your dear friend Cigole, your father’s intended murderer?” said he at length. “Cigole told me all about this long ago. He told me many things about his life which would be slightly damaging to his character as a witness, but I don’t mind telling you that the worst thing against him in English eyes is his betrayal of your father. But this seems to have been a very slight matter to you. It’s odd too; I’ve always supposed that Italians understood what vengeance means.”