“You can have anything you want,� said I recklessly. “I am your master with the sword, and your master with everything else. Now go.�
He turned and staggered away and that was the last I saw of him. I heard later that he had had the devil’s own time explaining those marks. He proclaimed that they had been inflicted by a madman, which was nearly the truth, but in some way the story leaked out and I should judge that my vengeance for the insult to my lady was as adequate as anything could be. He never lived down the tale, and I take it he was glad when he received a mortal wound in a duel from the hand of some other avenger of a woman’s wrong some years later.
“Master Hampdon,� whispered Mistress Lucy, in an awe-struck voice, as we went together through the garden, while I wiped my sword with leaves, “why did you do that? ’Twas horrible.�
“Why, mistress,� said I, striving to speak formally, “when I saw you in his arms I could have killed him.�
“But to mark him thus forever—� she began.
“Enough,� said I, with one of those flashes of imperiousness which always amazed me afterward and which really seemed to affect her strangely, “he only got his deserts.�
“But he will take his revenge on you,� she persisted.
“Let him try,� said I indifferently. “But I am come to take you to the ship. We must get there tonight to sail with the beginning of the ebb tomorrow morning.�
“I am ready,� she said, putting her hand upon my arm with unwonted humility.
We went into the house and from there to the coach with her maid and her baggage, after making her farewells to her kind host and hostess. In the evening we got aboard the ship where I saw her safely bestowed in the comfortable cabin I had arranged for her and for her woman. When day broke and she came on deck, we were under way for the Island of the Stairs. The great adventure had begun.