He paused a moment while his restless eyes wandered rapidly over her face, trying, as it were, to get at the soul of this woman, at her innermost thoughts, which he felt were hidden from him.
“Yes, citizen,” she said quietly; “what is it that I am to remember?”
“That it rests with you, Lady Blakeney, to put an end to the present situation.”
“How?”
“Surely you can persuade Sir Percy’s friends not to leave their chief in durance vile. They themselves could put an end to his troubles to-morrow.”
“By giving up the Dauphin to you, you mean?” she retorted coldly.
“Precisely.”
“And you hoped—you still hope that by placing before me the picture of your own fiendish cruelty against my husband you will induce me to act the part of a traitor towards him and a coward before his followers?”
“Oh!” he said deprecatingly, “the cruelty now is no longer mine. Sir Percy’s release is in your hands, Lady Blakeney—in that of his followers. I should only be too willing to end the present intolerable situation. You and your friends are applying the last turn of the thumbscrew, not I—”
She smothered the cry of horror that had risen to her lips. The man’s cold-blooded sophistry was threatening to make a breach in her armour of self-control.