The king and the alcaldes assenting, the marquis was sworn and told his story, admitting that it was not one which he was proud to repeat in public. He narrated how he had first met Margaret, Betty, and Peter at a public ceremony in London, and had then and there fallen in love with Margaret, and accompanied her home to the house of her father, the merchant John Castell.
Subsequently he discovered that this Castell, who had fled from Spain with his father in childhood, was that lowest of mankind, an unconverted Jew who posed as a Christian (at this statement there was a great sensation in court, and the queen’s face hardened), although it is true that he had married a Christian lady, and that his daughter had been baptized and brought up as a Christian, of which faith she was a loyal member. Nor did she know—as he believed—that her father remained a Jew, since, otherwise, he would not have continued to seek her as his wife. Their Majesties would be aware, he went on, that, owing to reasons with which they were acquainted, he had means of getting at the truth of these matters concerning the Jews in England, as to which, indeed, he had already written to them, although, owing to his shipwreck and to the pressure of his private affairs, he had not yet made his report on his embassy in person.
Continuing, he said that he admitted that he had made love to the serving-woman, Betty, in order to gain access to Margaret, whose father mistrusted him, knowing something of his mission. She was a person of no character.
Here Betty rose and said in a clear voice:
“I declare the Marquis of Morella to be a knave and a liar. There is more good character in my little finger than in his whole body, and,” she added, “than in that of his mother before him”—an allusion at which the marquis flushed, while, satisfied for the present with this home-thrust, Betty sat down.
He had proposed to Margaret, but she was not willing to marry him, as he found that she was affianced to a distant cousin of hers, the Señor Peter Brome, a swashbuckler who was in trouble for the killing of a man in London, as he had killed the soldier of the Holy Hermandad in Spain. Therefore, in his despair, being deeply enamoured of her, and knowing that he could offer her great place and fortune, he conceived the idea of carrying her off, and to do so was obliged, much against his will, to abduct Betty also.
So after many adventures they came to Granada, where he was able to show the Dona Margaret that the Señor Peter Brome was employing his imprisonment in making love to that member of his household, Inez, who had been spoken of, but now could not be found.
Here Peter, who could bear this no longer, also rose and called him a liar to his face, saying that if he had the opportunity he would prove it on his body, but was ordered by the king to sit down and be silent.
Having been convinced of her lover’s unfaithfulness, the marquis went on, the Dona Margaret had at length consented to become his wife on condition that her father, the Señor Brome, and her servant, Betty Dene, were allowed to escape from Granada——
“Where,” remarked the queen, “you had no right to detain them, Marquis. Except, perhaps, the father, John Castell,” she added significantly.