Rose Marie's words had rung clearly and distinctly from end to end of the hall. After she spoke, after that protest from the accused, dead silence fell on all. Only the fluttering of the fans came as a strange moaning sound, hovering in the over-heated air.
Excitement like the embodiment of a thousand spirits flew across and across on wings widely outstretched—unseen yet tangible. Soon a half-audible curse spoken from beneath the mullioned windows broke the spell of awed silence.
Rupert Kestyon, with rage and shame surging in his heart, fear, too, at the possible consequences of this unexpected interference, muttered angry oaths beneath his breath. Then like the ripple of innumerable waves, an hundred exclamations rose from every corner of the court. Lord Rochester was seen to whisper animatedly to the king. Mistress Peyton turned and held hurried converse with Sir John Ayloffe, who sat at her elbow. A few women tried to titter; the lowering cloud of scandal made vain endeavour to spread itself over the head of that slender girl who stood there before the judge, fearless and impassive beneath this gathering tempest of sneers and evil words.
She had heard the muttered oath, spoken by lips that she had already learned to dread, and her calm, blue eyes, serene as the skies of her native Provence, sought the lonely figure beneath the mullion, and rested on it with a look of challenge and of defiance. She had meant and desired to be loyal to him, she would have clung to him through sorrow and loneliness, humiliation and derision, if need be, but Fate had been too strong for her. The man she loved was in peril of his life and could only be saved at the sacrifice of her own loyalty and of her honour.
There had never been any conflict within her. The moment she knew how the accusation stood against her beloved, she mapped out her course and never swerved.
Come contumely and disgrace, public scandal and her own undoing, she was ready for it all. It had been over-easy to guess what had occurred: how Michael had come to be accused of that which was threatening his cousin. Rose Marie understood it, even as if she had been present at the interview between the two kinsmen, when one man sold his life for the other's loyalty and for her happiness.
All this and more her glance across the court told to Rupert Kestyon. It told him that ready as she had been to follow him even at the cost of her own misery, she was not ready to pay for his safety with the life of the man whom alone she loved.
Michael may have sinned. He did sin, no doubt, against God and against her, but God of a truth had made him suffer enough. It was Rupert's turn now to pay, and pay he must. Small coin it was, for his child-wife's disgrace, his own humiliation at the inevitable scandal and consequent gossip was but small money indeed beside the boundless wealth of self-sacrifice which Michael had been ready to throw in his cousin's lap.
Perhaps that something of the magnetism which emanated from her personality, perhaps the subtle and mysterious magic which Love exercises over all who think and who feel, affected these people who were present at this memorable scene. Certain it is that there were but very few men and women in this stately hall who did not feel an undefinable sense of sympathy for the three chief actors of the drama which they were witnessing.
The Lord Chief Justice—at best a hard and cynical man of the world, a man on whom history hath cast a mantle of opprobrium—was strangely impressed. He had watched the girl very closely whilst she spoke, had noted the looks which passed between father and daughter and thence across to the prisoner at the bar, and something of the truth of the soulful sacrifice which all three were prepared to make dawned upon his alert brain.