"Doth not exist? What do you mean?"
"Oh, I have seen the mother of Lucy Walters," I replied.
"Thou hast seen——!" he stopped suddenly, his deep-set eyes darting angry glances at me and his body trembling with passion.
"Ay, I have seen her; but it is no use. Do you think that Charles Stuart would ever wed such as she?"
"But he did, he did!" he cried, carried away by his passion. "And what is more, I have proof of it—and——" Again he ceased speaking suddenly. I saw that he had said more than he intended. Now this was the point to which I had aimed to bring him, and I tried to take him further.
"A vain boast," I said. "Where is it, if it exists?"
"Where you will never see it. But stay, tell me who you are? By what means did you obtain knowledge of these things?"
"I have seen a man having a wondrous likeness to Sir Charles Denman," I replied, drawing a bow at a venture.
"Ay, and he sent his pretty Constance to me. He thought to befool me with his ill-thought-out plans—me who learnt wisdom before he was born. Ay, and you saw the pretty Constance too, did you? But she hath told you naught, no—she hath told you naught. How could she? He did not know, she did not know, and you, you do not know."
He laughed like a man in great glee; nevertheless I saw that his eyes were full of fear. Twenty years before he would have been a strong resolute man, whom it would have been difficult to bend, but now age had dimmed his powers and made him incapable of grasping wide issues.