"What a vehement youth! Friend Peter, I trust that chicken is done to your taste?"
"Ja," grunted Peter, plying a ready knife and fork.
"Will a thigh be satisfactory, Robert? This dish contains potatoes which were fresh when we started our voyage and should be so still. Serve Master Ormerod, Gunn. So! We will resume our debate.
"As to the maid's inclusion in our scheme, 'twas manifestly of the chiefest importance that Colonel O'Donnell's connection with me be not suspected. And the best way to cloak that was to have his daughter accompany him. Not even a Spanish official—than which there is no more suspicious breed—can carp at O'Donnell's movements whilst she is with him."
"But why?" I persisted. "Why all this devious deceit? Why mix a young maid in an unsavory intrigue? Why make her father disloyal to his master?"
Murray flushed crimson.
"He is not disloyal to his master," he replied with his first show of anger. "Colonel O'Donnell's master, my master—aye, your master—is King James! What doth O'Donnell care for the paltry Spaniard who sits in the palace at Madrid? What do any of us care for the Spaniards, who have not been men enough to live up to their declarations of support of the Stuarts? Why, this girl you mouth about would cheerfully suffer death, dishonor, any torment, to win for her king the means of power we shall afford him. And this treasure, which the Spaniards have wrung from the lands they stole from the poor Indians, we wring from them as remorselessly that we may apply it to a purpose infinitely higher than the placating of royal favorites and mistresses, which is the way 'twould go in Madrid. An unsavory business, forsooth! Boy, are you a fool?"
There was that about his rage which benumbed my own and awakened again the reluctant admiration which puzzled and embarrassed me. What was it my father had said of him?
"He is sincere in a queer, twisted way."
Past doubt, he was. I sensed a warped nobility of mind which stirred me to sympathy and pity. I felt of a sudden as if our places had been reversed, as if his white hairs were mine, and his my unlined face.