"'Tis as you say, Mr. Stair. But as it chances, Mistress Margery is not my wife."
If I had flung the candle at him where he stood fumbling behind him for the door-latch,'twould not have made him shrink or dodge the more.
"Wha—what's that ye say?" he piped in shrillest cadence. "Not married? Then you—you—"
"I lied to save her honor—that was all. A wife might do the thing she did and go scot free of any scandal; but not a maid, as you could see and hear."
For some brief time it smote him speechless, and in the depth of his astoundment he forgot his foolish fear of me and fell to pacing up and down, though always with the table cannily between us. And as he shuffled back and forth the thin lips muttered foolish nothings, with here and there a tremulous oath. When all was done he dropped into a chair and stared across at me with leaden eyes; and truly he had the look of one struck with a mortal sickness.
"I think—I think you owe me something now beyond your keeping, Captain Ireton," he quavered, at length, mumbling the words as do the palsied.
"Since you are Margery's father, I owe you anything a dying man can pay," said I.
"Words; empty words," he fumed. "If it were a thing to do, now—"
"You need but name the thing and I will do it willingly."
Instead of naming it he shot a question at me, driving it home with certain random thrustings of the shifty eyes.