"Robert, I cannot listen to you—'tis dangerous—fatal. If—if I did love you still, thy crimes—"
"Ha! do you know me!"
"As 'the Kyd.'"
"Who told thee this?" he asked, fiercely.
"Elpsy."
"When?"
"Yesterday!"
"The foul fiend!" he cried, pacing the floor. He then muttered, "So—this plan is defeated. I can no longer rewoo her as Lester! Ten minutes since, this false witch told me that none save herself knew that the bastard Lester and Kyd were one! I would have made her believe I had returned from five years of honourable exile, to which her anger had banished me, and penitent, wooed her as Lester, as I have promised the sorceress—for I can do now what then I could not do: five years of crime makes a wonderful difference in a man's feelings! Yet I will deny all. She should believe me before this witch."
Such were the thoughts that run rapidly through his mind as he walked the room. Turning round to her, he said, in the tone of voice that innocence would assume,
"Alas, dearest Kate! has this baleful sorceress, with envenomed breath, instilled her poison in a flower so fair. Alas, and were I 'the Kyd,' would you, with the taproom gossips of the babbling town, believe me such as Rumour with her hundred tongues would make me? Shall I to her refer this altered air—this cold look—this hand that's neither given nor withdrawn? Dost remember when first we parted after our plighted vows beneath the linden by the southern tower of Castle Cor ('twas the third day before thy birthday, I remember it well); thy heart against mine beat wildly—thy head lay upon my breast—my arm encircled thy waist—my lips were pressed to thine—and this 'kerchief, bearing thy initials wrought by thine own fingers, and which I have kept sacred as the pious monk a relic of the cross, was saturate with tears—thy tears, Kate. And thus, though five long years have separated us, do we meet now!"