"How?"
"On one condition."
"I can guess it."
"The same I put before you at St. Denis."
Rupert Kestyon broke out into a laugh, a harsh, disagreeable laugh of irony and of despair.
"Man, the wench would not have me now. Am I not beggared and a fugitive from justice? Her father would now be the first to take her from me. She married the Earl of Stowmaries and Rivaulx—"
But Michael interrupted him, saying:
"And after a brief sojourn with her in her old home in Paris you, as Earl of Stowmaries and Rivaulx, will bring your wife back as chatelaine of Maries Castle, even before the last leaf has fallen from the oak."
"But you—'tis you who—"
"I stay here to meet the charge of high treason and conspiracy preferred against the Earl of Stowmaries," said Michael very quietly.