‘Was that same betrothal before you married your wife or afterwards?’
He sprang half-way up from his seat, as if to leap upon me, but he sank back again, his face convulsed with passion and his fingers picking furiously at the turf by his side. ‘His wife!’ went round the ring in amazed whisperings.
‘Yes, his wife,’ said I. ‘The wife who was with him when I saw him in my country; the wife who came with him here, who was in the cottage on the hill, whom Vlacho would have dragged by force to her death, who lay last night yonder in the guardhouse. Where is she, Constantine Stefanopoulos? Or is she dead now, and you free to wed the Lady Euphrosyne? Is she alive, or has she by now learnt the secret of the Stefanopouloi?’
I do not know which made more stir among the people, my talk of his wife or my hint about the secret. They crowded round me, hemming me in. I saw Phroso no more; but Kortes pushed his way to my side. Then the eyes of all turned on Constantine, where he sat with face working and nails fiercely plucking the turf.
‘What is this lie?’ he cried. ‘I know nothing of a wife. True, there was a woman in the cottage.’
‘Ay, there was a woman in the cottage,’ said Kortes. ‘And she was in the guardhouse; but I did not know who she was, and I had no commands concerning her; and this morning she was gone.’
‘That woman is his wife,’ said I; ‘but he and Vlacho had planned to kill her, in order that he might marry your Lady and have your island for himself.’
Demetri suddenly cried, with a great appearance of horror and disgust:
‘Shall he live to speak such a slander against my lord?’