When they reached her house he dismounted with her, wearing an outward air of courtesy; but his eye mocked her, as she knew. His horse was in a lather of sweat, and he spoke to a servant.
“Take my beast home,” he said. “He is too hot to stand, and I shall not soon be ready.”
CHAPTER XVI—Dealing with that which was done in the Panelled Parlour
He followed her to the Panelled Parlour, the one to which she had taken Osmonde on the day of their bliss, the one in which in the afternoon she received those who came to pay court to her over a dish of tea. In the mornings none entered it but herself or some invited guest. ’Twas not the room she would have chosen for him; but when he said to her, “’Twere best your ladyship took me to some private place,” she had known there was no other so safe.
When the door was closed behind them, and they stood face to face, they were a strange pair to behold—she with mad defiance battling with mad despair in her face; he with the mocking which every woman who had ever trusted him or loved him had lived to see in his face when all was lost. Few men there lived who were as vile as he, his power of villainy lying in that he knew not the meaning of man’s shame or honour.
“Now,” she said, “tell me the worst.”
“’Tis not so bad,” he answered, “that a man should claim his own, and swear that no other man shall take it from him. That I have sworn, and that I will hold to.”
“Your own!” she said—“your own you call it—villain!”
“My own, since I can keep it,” quoth he. “Before you were my Lord of Dunstanwolde’s you were mine—of your own free will.”
“Nay, nay,” she cried. “God! through some madness I knew not the awfulness of—because I was so young and had known naught but evil—and you were so base and wise.”