"'Tis false! unblushing as thou art." The lightning kindled in the lady's eye as she spoke. Sir Osmund quailed beneath her glance.
"Am I mad?" she continued; "ay, if thy wish could have goaded me to it. Thou hast heaped on me tortures, indignities, cruel as thy relentless nature could devise; but I have been spared for this!" Her lips quivered. Shuddering, she spoke with amazing energy and distinctness. "I have repented, day and night, but they were unavailing tears. Oh, if I have wronged thee"—she covered her face with her hands—"it was not even in thought that I grew unfaithful to thy trust. My babes, in a
moment of weakness I looked on them, smiling as they lay. I could not dash the cup from their lips ere they had well nigh tasted. I could not behold them so soon doomed to misery and want."
She made a convulsive effort to repress her sobs.
"Can years of suffering atone for my crime?"
She drew back as she continued, "I abhor, I loathe the very existence I am forced to prolong. The cloister alone can hide my wretchedness and my shame."
"I forgive thee: nay, shrink not from my embrace," cried the distracted Sir William; "I blame thee not in my regret. Pure, and as free from guilt as when first I knew thee, do I now receive thee to my arms."
Sir Osmund smiled in contempt; at the same time casting a furtive glance towards the side entrance, where, true to his word, Roger De Cliderhow had summoned a guard of Welsh bowmen, their master's accomplices in many a deed of violence and rapine.
Sir Osmund heard their approach. He cautiously undrew the bolts, and, pointing to his foe with a signal they but too well understood, the latter was immediately seized, and with such rapidity, that almost before Sir William was aware of their design, he found himself a prisoner and incapable of resistance.
"Traitor, thou wilt rue this foul despite! I here proclaim thee a craven knight and a dastard!" exclaimed Sir William.