"As the abductor of the Countess of Clare."
Darby held up his hands in amazement. "Are you clean daft?" he exclaimed.
"It is useless, my lord, longer to play the innocent," said Aymer. "Either confess what has been done with the Countess or to the King you go straightway."
Darby shrugged his shoulders. "Since you have the rogues to obey you and I have not the information you desire, it must be to the King," he said. "And the more haste you use to reach him the quicker will come my time to even scores with you," and he sat down and began to brush the dirt from his garments.
De Lacy eyed him in stern silence, his resentment growing fiercer as he held it in restraint; while the squire, in equal anger, kept shooting his dagger back and forth in its sheath as if impatient to use it. And but for the sake of the information Darby could furnish as to Beatrix, the dagger might have been suffered to do its work and De Lacy raise no hand to stay it. Nay, rather, would he have stood by and watched it strike home with grim satisfaction.
Presently Darby had finished with his clothes and glancing up met De Lacy's eyes. A taunting smile came to his lips and he began to whistle softly to himself. It was De Lacy who spoke first.
"I should like to know," said he, "how one of your craftiness could be so stupid as to carry off the Countess of Clare? What possible profit could you think to gain?"
Darby did not answer at once. When he did, it was with a sneer.
"Methinks, good sir," he said, "you are too stupid to appreciate that you have, yourself, unwittingly advanced the best proof of my innocence. Fools, you know, sometimes speak truth."
"Aye, but even a fool would know that Flat-Nose and you were together in yonder upper room. Can you explain that, my dear lord?"