She pushed the tangled hair from her forehead, mechanically readjusting her cumbersome garments, then she stepped close up to the young Spaniard; she crossed her arms over her breast and looked him boldly in the eyes.
"Soho! my fine lord!" she said, speaking with a strange and pathetic effort at calmness, "that's it, is it? . . . and do ye take me for a fool, that I do not see through your tricks? . . . You and that purple-robed hypocrite there wanted to make use of me . . . you cajoled me with soft words . . . promises . . . what? . . . Bah! you tricked me, I say, do you hear?" she added with ever-increasing vehemence, "tricked me that you might trick him. . . . With all your talks of Ursula and Lady . . . the devil alone knows what ye wanted. . . . Well! you've had your way . . . he looked on me as he would on a plague-stricken cur . . . mangy and dirty. . . . Was that what ye wanted? . . . You've had your will . . . are ye satisfied . . . what more do ye want of me?"
Don Miguel, much astonished at this unexpected outburst of passion, gazed at her with a sneer, then he shrugged his shoulders and said coldly—
"Nothing, wench! His Grace of Wessex does not desire thy company, and I cannot allow thee to molest him. If thou'lt depart in peace, there'll be a well-filled purse for thee . . . if not . . . the whip, my girl . . . the whip . . . understand!"
"I will not go!" she repeated with dogged obstinacy. "I'll not . . . I'll not . . . I'll see him just once . . . he was good to me. . . . I love his beautiful face and his kind, white hands; I want to kiss them. . . . I'll not go . . . I'll not . . . till I've kissed them. . . . So do not stand in my way, fine sir . . . but let me get to him. . . ."
The obstinate desire, half a mania now, had grown upon her with this wanton thwarting of her wishes. A wholly unfettered passion seethed in her, half made up of hatred against this man who had fooled her and caused her to be spurned with unutterable contempt by Wessex.
"I'll give thee three minutes in which to get sober, my wench!" remarked Don Miguel placidly. "After that, take heed. . . ."
He laughed a long, cruel laugh, and looked at her with an evil leer, up and down.
"After that thou'lt go," he said slowly and significantly, "but not in peace. The Palace watch have a heavy hand . . . three men to give thee ten lashes each . . . till thy shoulders bleed, wench . . . aye! I'll have thee whipped till thou die under it . . . so go now or . . ."
He looked so evil, so threatening, so full of baffled rage, that instinctively she drew back a few steps away from him, into the gloom. . . . As she did so her foot knocked against something on the floor, whilst the sharp point of some instrument of steel penetrated through the thin soles of her shoes.