Diana stood speechless, staring at him.
I was afraid the two out there might hear my heartbeats, they sounded so loudly in my own ears.
"I realized how foolish I'd been, not to see that difference before," Eagle went on, still speaking with a deliberate distinctness, as if he were willing I should catch every word.
That he should be saying such things to Diana was so wonderful, so almost incredible, that I asked myself if he were saying them only to save my pride because Di had snatched my love for him out of hiding and trailed it in the dust at his feet. "I ought to have loved Peggy almost as much as I love her now, the very day we met first. I ought to have felt she was the one woman—the one thing in the world for me. But she looked such a child! It would have seemed like sacrilege to love her as a man loves a woman—that little sprite of a creature. And then I met you. You dazzled me, Lady Diana. That's the word for it. I think no other would fit. But I didn't know I was only dazzled, till you took the light away. As soon as the bright spots faded from before my eyes, as bright spots do at last when you've been staring at the sun, I saw things as they really were. I saw what my feeling for you was worth, and what my feeling for Peggy might grow to be. But I tried not to let it grow. I'd suffered enough. I was down and out, and if I wasn't worthy of you, still less was I worthy of Peggy. Besides, I thought she was engaged to Dalziel, and I wanted to be glad for her. He's a good fellow. Then we were thrown together in Belgium, she and I; and if I hadn't loved her before, I should have begun to love her then, as a man loves just one girl in his life. Whatever I have done since—the few small things I have been able to do—have all been with the thought of her in my heart as a lodestar. So now you will understand, Lady Diana, how little impression you can make upon me by calling your sister a traitor."
"You say all this to hurt me!" Diana cried out. "But you did care for me once, Eagle. Do not forget that!"
"I forget nothing," he said. "But the time you speak of seems a long time ago, I care so much more for Peggy now. Just how much I care for her, I am going to prove to you in a moment."
For a second he paused, while Di waited, not knowing what to say; and it seemed as if I were waiting, too; my heart and breath stopped for his next words.
"If I had ever loved you as dearly as I once thought I did," he went on, sadness in his voice, "I suppose I could have refused you nothing when you came to me to-night. But—I don't defend myself—I only confess to the hardness in me; you haven't moved me at all. You were cruel as the grave to me. I could be cruel in return to you. That is, I could act as I thought right and be indifferent to the effect on you. Your husband did his best to ruin me. Virtually, he did ruin me. Even to-night he has lied again, the same old lie, to pull me down if he could from the miserable little height I've crawled up to, like a singed moth creeping out of the flame. Did you ever believe in his truth and my guilt—believe in the depths of your soul—if you have a soul? I doubt it! Anyhow, you helped his lies to-night, as often before; of that I have no doubt at all. I've no mercy for you in my heart, and none for Vandyke. I had none, even when I stopped the horses on your wedding day. I didn't do that from any softening of heart toward either of you. It was purely mechanical. I'd have done the same for a pair of thieves, I assure you. Nothing you could say to me for yourself, Lady Diana, would make me give up my revenge, or rather my justification, which—by his own fault—can't come to me without Vandyke's ruin. But something you have said about Peggy has made all the difference."
"About Peggy? What do you mean?" Di faltered.
"You said that she was a 'traitor to her people' for my sake. Now, because I love her, I can't let her be that. I won't profit by her loyalty to me—at your expense. And I won't have the world say in speaking of her, 'There's Lady Peggy O'Malley, who bore witness against her brother-in-law and ruined him.' For myself, I believe it wouldn't give me a qualm if Vandyke blew out his brains to-morrow, but you have made me realize that I couldn't bear it for her sake. Thank you for that, Lady Diana. Here is the paper which Peggy found inside the lining of your husband's coat, and brought to me. Because of Peggy and my love for her, take it and do with it as you choose."