Seeing her silent, he resumed:
“It was this sad kinship pushed me to a parley wherein, perhaps, I have something strained my strict duty. But the voice of our common blood cried out in me to urge you to reason. You have done all that woman, all that man could do. Yield now, while I can still offer you terms, and your garrison shall march out with all the honors of war, drums beating, matches burning, colors flying.”
He was very earnest in his appeal, and Brilliana heard him to the end in silence, with her clinched hands pressed against her bosom. Then she turned fiercely upon him and her voice was bitter.
“Sir,” she cried, “if I hated you before for a detested rebel, think how I hate you now, if you be, even in so base a way, my kinsman.”
She turned away from him, lifting her clasped hands as if in supplication.
“Oh, Heaven, to think that a disloyal, hypocritical, canting Puritan could brag to my face that he carries one drop of our loyal blood in his false heart.”
She turned to him again with new fury.
“You are doubly a traitor now, and if you are wise you will keep out of my power, for my heart aches with its hate of you. Go! Five minutes left of your truce gives you just time to return to your rebels. If you overlinger in our lines but one minute you are no longer an envoy: you are an enemy and a spy and shall swing for it.”
She reached out her hand to strike the bell upon the table, while Evander Cloud, still impassive, paid a salutation to his unwilling hostess and made a motion to depart. But on the instant both were chilled into immobility by an amazing interruption. Brilliana’s hand never touched the bell; Evander’s hand never found the handle of the door. For between the beginning and the end of their action came a sudden rattle of musketry, distant but deafening, followed on the instant by a whirlwind of furious cries and noise.