Through the tears she would not shed, her great eyes dilated upon him.
“And what will you say—what shall we say—to your son, my lord?”
Rockhurst started as if he had been struck. A masterful man, who all his life had dominated others, he bent his brows with a terrible resentment on her who dared thwart him at this supreme hour of his will; dared lift against him the one weapon that could pierce his armour.
“You took the trust, my lord, even as I yielded my troth.…”
His anger broke forth, the more ruthlessly that he was, for the first time in his life, perhaps, abandoning himself to an unworthy part, a part of weakness. Broken phrases escaped his lips, contradictions lost in the irresistible logic of passion.
“My son, … my son?—I shall answer for myself to my son.—Nay, what account have I to render to my son! A beardless boy, shall he come between us?… Diana, your eyes have lied a thousand times, or you love me!… That promise to Harry was no promise, wrested from you, from me, because of a white face, pleading, because of a red wound! And, if he be true flesh of mine, he will have none of you, your heart being another’s.—Why, my dear,”—his voice changed,—“think you Harry will ever have his bride, will ever see his father again?”
So long as his eye flamed, as his voice harshly chid her, she felt strong. But against that note of tenderness she weakened. A sense of physical failing came over her; she thought of the moment when, in the darkness of the garden, she had awakened to find herself in his arms.… Perhaps, in truth, death was very near to them. To slip from the moorings of life, on the tide of his great love—ah, he had said it; it would be sweet! She clasped her hands to her breast; but at the touch of Lionel’s gold bauble, something in herself that Rockhurst’s words had lulled, started into vivid life again; something that would not let her accept the easier course. If death were, even at this moment, gloating upon them, the better reason to look on it with loyal eyes. Were Harry indeed fated never to meet bride or father again, then must father and bride remain sacred in noble memory! And not because she and Rockhurst were so fain to break it, was a promise less binding a promise. One sentence of Lionel’s rang in her ear: “Behold, the end is not difficult to guess”—and with it the echo of her own voice crying back to him, “Oh, foul-mouthed!”
Quickly she made her choice; and, brave in her pain, had a smile as she turned to speak.
“Once, my lord, you saved me, when I scarce knew myself in danger. To-day it is given to me to pay my debt. And I save you. Give me your arm again, kind, beloved friend, and through the hot contamination of these streets, as once through the pure snow, bring me to honourable shelter.”
For a second, the unexpected check, the unlooked-for strength of her resistance, kept him silent. Then gently, as if to an unreasonable child:—