"Oh! I am not young enough, nor yet well-favoured. The first fifty thousand pounds will help to make of you the most dashing gallant in the two kingdoms."
"But why a blackguard?" persisted Michael with cutting sarcasm. He felt agitated, even strangely excited. He was shrewd enough to see that Sir John was not fooling him, that there was more than a mere undercurrent of seriousness in this extraordinary offer made across this common supper table. His fingers were beating an incessant tattoo upon the boards, and his eyes restless, keen as those of a wild beast scenting a trap, searched the face of his interlocutor.
"Why a blackguard if the wench is a saint as you say, why a blackguard?" he insisted.
"A blackguard? Perish the thought!" said Sir John lightly. "Nay! the reason why your personality commended itself to me and to my lord of Stowmaries was because you are a gentleman, despite the many vicissitudes of an adverse Fate, and that you would render the girl happy and proud to be your wife."
"Ah! my worthy cousin is a party to this game?" queried Michael with a sneer.
"In Heaven's name, man," he added with almost savage impatience, "why cannot you speak up like a man? Cards on the table, by the Mass, or my hand will come in contact with your mealy mouth—"
He checked himself, angry at his own outburst of rage which he had been unable to control.
"Have I not said that I am on my way to Hell," he added more quietly, "why should you hesitate to show me a short cut?"
"Cards on the table, friend Michael, since you'll have it so," now said Ayloffe in a quiet impressive whisper, "bear that one hundred and twenty thousand pounds in your mind all the while you listen to me. The wench over in Paris was made to go through a marriage ceremony with your cousin here, eighteen years ago, when she was a babe in arms and he a mere lad, unable to defend himself against this encroachment on his future liberty. Since then my lord of Stowmaries has never met his bride, nor did her parents—worthy yet mercenary tradespeople of Paris—desire him to see their daughter. He was poor Rupert Kestyon then, an undesirable son-in-law if ever there was one: they would have broken the marriage then, only the Church would not allow it. Then my lord became what he now is, rich, influential, desirable, and promptly the Paris shopkeepers changed their tactics. They demanded that your cousin shall acknowledge and take to his heart and home a woman whom he has never seen, whom he can never love; for the affection of his heart, of his whole manhood is pledged to another whom he adores. In his despair my lord hath come to me and I am proud to be his friend. I would help him to regain that liberty which an untoward Fate hath fettered. Is not my lord a wholly innocent victim? He did not ask to wed—for long he was spurned as one unworthy. Now because he is rich, he is to be made the tool of rapacious bourgeois, who would see their daughter Countess of Stowmaries. They have invoked the aid of the Church who spurred by their gold hath threatened anathema and excommunication on my lord. The King—sorely inclined to Catholicism—will not hear of breaking marriage vows which he calls solemn, and which under such circumstances sensible men cannot fail to call a farce. My lord hath come to me and I have thought of a scheme—"
So far Michael had listened with unswerving attention to this long exposé delivered by Sir John in clear, even voice that was hardly raised above a whisper. He had listened, his head resting in his right hand, his left lying clenched and motionless on the table. But now he interrupted Ayloffe's placid flow of eloquence.