"Forgive me, Margery, I pray you; 'twas only what you said that made me mad. 'Tis less than naught if you'll deny it."
I waited long and patiently, and thought she must have gone before her answer came. And this is what she said:
"If I must tell you then;'tis now two weeks and more since Sir Francis Falconnet asked me to marry him. I—I hope you do feel better, Captain Ireton."
And with these bitterest of all words to her leave-taking, she left me to endure as best I might the hell of torment they had lighted for me.
VI
SHOWING HOW RED WRATH MAY HEAL A WOUND
It was full two days after the coming of the baronet and the factor-lawyer Pengarvin before I saw my lady's face near-hand again, and sometimes I was glad for Richard Jennifer's sake, but oftener would curse and swear because I was bound hand and foot and could not balk my enemy.
I knew Sir Francis and the lawyer still lingered on at Appleby Hundred—indeed, I saw them daily from my window—and Darius would be telling me that they waited upon the coming of some courier from the south. But this I disbelieved. Some such-like lie the baronet might have told, I thought; but when I saw him walk abroad with Margery on his arm, pacing back and forth beneath the oaks and bending low to catch her lightest word with grave and courtly deference that none knew better how to feign, I knew wherefore he stayed—knew and raged afresh at my own impotence, and for the thought that Margery was wholly at the mercy of this devil.
Yours is a colder century than was ours, my dears. Your art has tempered love and passion into sentiment, and hate you have learned to call aversion or dislike. But we of that simple-hearted elder time were more downright; and I have writ the word I mean in saying that my love was at the mercy of this fiend.