No one made response.

For the moment he was the Master again, the Leader.

Like so many delinquent school-boys, the others cowered before him, ashamed, put to confusion, unable to find their tongues.

In that brief instant of silence following upon Magnus's outburst, and while he held them subdued and over-mastered, the fabric of their scheme of corruption and dishonesty trembled to its base.

It was the last protest of the Old School, rising up there in denunciation of the new order of things, the statesman opposed to the politician; honesty, rectitude, uncompromising integrity, prevailing for the last time against the devious manoeuvring, the evil communications, the rotten expediency of a corrupted institution.
For a few seconds no one answered.