“Then came your sale to the slave dealer, and your escape from prison, before Lord Cordwaine had delivered you to the purchaser. He secured a royal warrant for your arrest, wherever you might be found, on the charge of high treason. Fearful that you might escape my vengeance I besought Lord Cordwaine to let me serve the document. Glad that he was not to be out of pocket by the arrangement he consented. Since then I have followed you from place to place, always arriving just as you had gone. I lost track of you when you sailed for this land, but now I can reap my reward.”
I know not what prevented me from springing at him then and ending it all. I wish I had. Perhaps it was his devil’s coolness, or his mastery over my feelings that held me to my chair. He proceeded after a pause, not heeding that I had risen as he began again.
“When King James fled,” he went on, “I managed to acquire some influence at the court of William and Mary. The warrant was renewed, though Lord Cordwaine, to my joy, died in the meantime, and I knew I could have you all to myself when I found you. So I continued my search, and now I have found you--and Lucille.”
“What of Lucille?” I cried. “Would you drive me mad by harping on her name, as if you had a right to use it? Speak, man. What are you to her, or what is she to you? There is some mystery here, of which I have had enough. Now out with it, or, warrant or no warrant, I’ll run you through as I would a dog.”
“What of Lucille?” repeating my words in a sneering tone. Then changing suddenly: “This of Lucille. That I love her better than life. Aye, I love her more than I hate you, and God knows that hate is as wide and as deep as the sea. I love her; I love her, and she loves me! For Lucille de Guilfort is my wife!”
CHAPTER XI.
A MAN AND HIS WIFE.
I was like a man who saw death before him when I heard his words. Lucille his wife, when but a few short months ago she had promised to be mine. She had let me woo and win her, knowing that she had no right--that I had no right!
“Oh God!” I cried; and then I stopped, for I did not know what I might pray for; her death, or his or my own. Yet with it all I loved her; more than ever.
A great grief or a great joy stuns for the moment. So it was with me. My heart’s dearest idol was shattered; crumbled into dust, and, instead of pain, there was a numbness and a feeling that I had never known before. I raised my hand to my head as if I would brush away cobwebs from my eyes.
“Lucille,” I began, in so strange a tone that I started at the word, and the silence seemed broken by my tone as by a thunder clap.