"I am the wife of Rupert Kestyon, formerly styled my lord of Stowmaries," she rejoined with calm emphasis. "Had my father kept silent, had he not endeavoured to clear an innocent man of an unjust charge by giving up that which he holds most dear—his daughter's honour and his own good name—had he remained silent, I say, then would the accused have suffered death, my husband would have succeeded to his title and estates, and I would have duly become the Countess of Stowmaries and Rivaulx, the richest, mayhap the most honoured lady in this beautiful land. Think you, then, that 'tis the caprice of wanton love that would make me swear what I did? Think you that—unless truth and honour itself compelled him—my father would lend a hand to the degradation of his own child?"
What Michael endured in agony of mind throughout this time, it were almost impossible to conceive. Imagine that type of man—the adventurer, the soldier of fortune, the carver of his own destiny, good or bad, the dictator of his own fate! Imagine that man for the first time in his life rendered absolutely helpless the while his fate, his life, was being decided on by others. After those first mad and useless protests, after that wild struggle for freedom of speech, for the right to refuse this whole-hearted sacrifice, this offering of the lily on the altar of love, he had remained silent, with his head buried in his hands, driving his finger nails into his own flesh, longing with a mad longing of pain to find a means of ending his own existence here and now, before his snowdrop had suffered the full consequences of her own heaven-born impulse.
Ye gods above! And he—Michael—had doubted her love for him! Fool, fool that he had been, even for a moment, even in thought to give her up to another. He who had ever been ready to account for his own actions, who with the arrogant pride of fallen angels had always looked his own sins in the face, grinning, hideous monsters though they may have been—how came it that when first she spoke cold words to him he did not then silence them with a kiss, how came it that he did not then and there take her in his arms, defying the laws of men, for the sake of the first, the greatest of God's laws which gives the woman to the man?
Fool that he had been to think of aught save love, and of love alone.
And all the while, Rose Marie, calm and still as the very statue of abnegation, was completing her work of self-immolation. When the Attorney-General-with sneering lips and mocking eyes threw discredit on those statements which she and her dear father were making at the cost of their own honour, she felt the first terrible pang of fear. Not for herself or her future, but for him whom she longed to save and lest her sacrifice be made and yet remain useless. Just for that moment, her serenity gave way. She looked all round her on that sea of jeering faces, longing to cry for help, just as with her whole attitude she had until this moment only called for justice.
Once more her eyes lighted on Rupert Kestyon, her husband, throwing him a challenge, which now had almost become a prayer. He could if he would help her even now. She had become naught to him, of course. Whatever he said could not add to her disgrace; but he could help to save Michael if he would.
She met his lowering glance, the look of hatred and wrath which embraced her and her father, and the obstinate set of jaw and lips which spoke of the determination to win his own safety, his own advancement and the furtherance of his own ambition now and at any cost.
But when the iron determination of a woman who loves, and who fights for the safety of the man she loves, comes in contact with the cold obstinacy of a man's ambition, then must the latter yield to the overwhelming strength of the other.
Rupert Kestyon could have saved Michael at cost of his own immediate exaltation, and thus saved Rose Marie a final and complete humiliation, but this, his every look told her that he would not do. Therefore after that quick glance, her eyes no longer challenged him; she feared that if she dragged him forcibly into this conflict with perjury, his own self-interest would make a stand against justice. Heaven alone knew to what evil promptings his ambition would listen at the moment, when the one life—already so splendidly jeopardised—stood between him and the title and wealth which he coveted.
She did not know that any one save her father and herself could speak with certainty as to that memorable evening of April nineteenth when she went forth—cruel, cold and resentful—leaving Michael alone and desolate at the inn of St. Denis.