"Why, then I will hold by a still better tenure," replied Sir Payan; "the extinction of the race of Darnley!"
"Then hold thereby, if such be heaven's will," replied the prisoner. "But beware yourself; for in your best-laid schemes you may chance to fail, and even here on earth meet with that sure damnation for which you have toiled so long. Were I willing to stain myself with crimes like yours, this hour were your last; for yon dagger were but a poor defence against a man who knows his life is lost."
Sir Payan took a step forward to the door. "Will you sign?" said he, laying his hand on the lock.
"Never!"
"Then farewell!" and he quitted the apartment.
"Oh, the villain!" cried Jekin Groby, poking his head out of the closet. "Oh, the downright, immense villain! What a damaged piece that man's conscience must be! I'm all quaking with only hearing him. But don't you think, my lord--that is to say, Sir Osborne--that if you had just knocked his brains out, we might have got away?"
"No, no!" replied the knight. "If, as Heartley told us, we could not have escaped when aided by Lady Constance de Grey's servants, much less could we do so now. Better wait till night, which surely cannot be far distant, for it seems to me we have been here an age."
Nevertheless, hour after hour went by, and the provoking sun, which had now fully come round to that side of the house, continued to pour his beams into the high window, as if willing to sicken the prisoners with his unwished-for light. Nor did much conversation cheer the passing of their time. Sir Osborne was silent and meditative; and Jekin Groby, growing more and more tired of his situation, kept running in and out of the closet, now sitting still for a moment upon the straw, now walking up and down, not at all unlike a tame bear perambulating to and fro in his den.
Occasionally, indeed, a word or two of hope, or doubt, or inquiry, passed between the prisoners; and Jekin, who felt in himself an internal conviction that he was a man of as much consequence in the world as any human being, could not conceive how Sir Payan Wileton could have forgot to inquire where he was, when he did not find him in the same room with the knight. On this he wondered, and better wondered, till his companion replied, "I told you before, my good Jekin, Sir Payan's designs only affect me, and possibly he may have forgotten you altogether. But it seems growing darker. I wonder Longpole has not been here to speak to us, according to his promise."
"I should not wonder if he were playing us a trick, and were not to come at all," said Jekin. "Oh, dear! What would become of us? Lord-a-mercy! I don't like it at all!"