"You make me rue it now, beforehand. Mon Dieu! is a woman but a thing, to stand before the priest and plight her troth for 'merest form'? You'll make me hate you while I live—and after!"
"You'd hate me worse, Margery dear, if I should leave you drowning in this ditch. And I can bear your hatred for some few hours, knowing that if I sinned and robbed you, I did make restitution as I could."
She heard me through with eyelids down and some fierce storm of passion shaking her. And when she answered her voice was low and soft; yet it cut me like a knife.
"You drive me to it—listen, sir, you drive me to it! And I have said that I shall hate you for it. Come; 'tis but a mockery, as you say; and they are waiting."
I sought to take her hand and lead her forth, but this she would not suffer. She walked beside me, proud and cold and scornful; stood beside me while I sat and read the parchment over. It was no marriage settlement; it was a will, drawn out in legal form. And in it I bequeathed to Margery Ireton as her true jointure, not any claim of mine to Appleby Hundred, but the estate itself.
I read it through as I have said, and, looking across to these two plotters, the miser-master and his henchman, smiled as I had never thought to smile again.
"So," said I; "the truth is out at last. I wondered if the confiscation act had left you wholly scatheless, Mr. Stair. Well, I am content. I shall die the easier for knowing that I have lain a guest in my own house. Give me the pen."
'Twas given quickly, and I signed the will, with Tybee and the lawyer for the witnesses; Margery standing by the while and looking on; though not, I made sure, with any realizing of the business matter.
When all was done the priest found his book, and we stood before him; the woman who had sworn to hate, and the man who, loving her to full forgetfulness of death itself, must yet be cold and formal, masking his love for her dear sake, and for the sake of loyalty to his friend. And here again 'twas Tybee and the lawyer who were the witnesses; the one well hated, and the other loved if but for this; that when the time came for the giving of the ring, he drew a gold band from his little finger and made me take and use it.
And so that deed was done in some such sorry fashion as the time and place constrained; and had you stood within the four walls of that upper room you would have thought the chill of death had touched us, and that the low-voiced priest was shriving us the while we knelt to take his benediction. All through this farce—which was in truth the grimmest of all tragedies—my lady played her part as one who walks in sleep; and at the end she let her father lead her out with not a word or look or sign to me.