“My maid, Mary Forest, told me it was Ralph,” returned my Lady calmly.
“Did she? Well, that's no reason why you should call me by it. However, since you seem to feel so unexpected an interest in your humble servant, I will make bold to ask a favour of you.” His manner was rough and defiant as ever now, like that of a sturdy vagrant soliciting alms of a defenceless woman.
“You are angry with yourself,” said my Lady quietly, “for having given way to feelings which do you honour; that is a base sort of regret indeed. You try to persuade yourself that I have affected a sympathy which I did not feel, but you do not succeed. I cannot but be interested in one who, with all his faults, has certainly in the hour of death and danger behaved nobly, and who must, I feel assured, have the seeds of good in him yet, despite his wild and despairing talk.”
“No, woman, I have not,” returned the man with vehemence. “Dismiss that from your mind at once. Ralph Derrick is no hypocrite, whatever he is, and he tells you now that he is a lost man, in the sense which such as you understand it. I don't know why I have spoken to you as I have done just now—some springs of feeling that I had deemed were quite dried up flowed at your voice as they have not done these thirty years—but don't imagine that I am soft-hearted. I am not a bad fellow when I'm sober, and not put out; but then I'm seldom sober, and I'm very easily put out. Your son, Sir Richard, has put me out, for one. I should be sorry for him if he and I had much to do with one another.—But there, you need not turn so pale; for, for your sake—and for Master Walter's sake, who has got my Lucy's eyes, and look, and voice, God bless him—Sir Richard is safe from me; albeit I have let fly a bullet before now at men who have wronged me less than he has done—an insolent young devil! It was a man like him, one of your landowners, forsooth, whose persecution drove me from my native shore, and drowned my wife and the old couple. Damn all such tyrants, says Ralph Derrick”——
It was difficult to associate the depressed and solemn speaker of a few minutes back with this passionate and lawless man, his huge fingers opening and shutting in nervous excitement, his eyeballs suffused with blood, and each hair of his vast beard, as it seemed, bristling with vengeful fury.
“You were saying that you wished to ask a favour of me, Mr Derrick?” interposed my Lady quietly. “What is it I can do for you?”
“Well, you can do this,” returned he roughly: “you can cease to set your waiting-maid, Mary, against me, as you have hitherto done. I am not a bad match for her, as she knows, in point of money; and if she finds herself able to put up with little starts of temper, and not to grudge me a drop o' drink at times, why, what is that to you?”
“Have you told her, may I ask, of what you have been telling me, Mr Derrick?”
“Yes; at least I told her I was a widower; I never felt a call to tell her more; she would not understand, look you. She asked me what this leaden locket was I wear about my neck, with this poor broken piece of stick in it, and something withered clinging to it still, and I told her it was a charm against the ague. Now, you—I'll wager you can tell me what it holds.”
“No, not I. How should I know?” inquired my Lady hurriedly.