“Why, sir?” retorted Blakeney, “methought you and your kind did not believe in God.”
“No. But you English do.”
“We do. But we do not care to hear His name on your lips.”
“Then in the name of the wife whom you love—”
But even before the words had died upon his lips, Sir Percy, too, had risen to his feet.
“Have done, man—have done,” he broke in hoarsely, and despite weakness, despite exhaustion and weariness, there was such a dangerous look in his hollow eyes as he leaned across the table that Chauvelin drew back a step or two, and—vaguely fearful—looked furtively towards the opening into the guard-room. “Have done,” he reiterated for the third time; “do not name her, or by the living God whom you dared to invoke I’ll find strength yet to smite you in the face.”
But Chauvelin, after that first moment of almost superstitious fear, had quickly recovered his sang-froid.
“Little Capet, Sir Percy,” he said, meeting the other’s threatening glance with an imperturbable smile, “tell me where to find him, and you may yet live to savour the caresses of the most beautiful woman in England.”
He had meant it as a taunt, the final turn of the thumb-screw applied to a dying man, and he had in that watchful, keen mind of his well weighed the full consequences of the taunt.
The next moment he had paid to the full the anticipated price. Sir Percy had picked up the pewter mug from the table—it was half-filled with brackish water—and with a hand that trembled but slightly he hurled it straight at his opponent’s face.