“You are no kern’s son, Walter Fitzmaurice, but of a noble house. How is it that you eat the bread and run at the stirrups of the Sassenach who is the destroyer of your race?”
I stretched my hands imploringly to the cowled figure.
“He rescued me from death,” I cried; “he warmed me with his love. He has taught me all a noble youth should know.”
“You love him?”
“I love him.”
“Listen, boy. They think they have destroyed the Desmonds, root and branch, as a man might tread out under his heel a nest of vipers. Yet hope is not dead. The line of the Geraldines is not destroyed. Return to your own people and leave this evil knight.”
“Alas, I cannot,” I said, “for I love him.”
“The blood of your kin is red on his hands.”
“And yet I love him.”
“He and his freebooters have wasted the country that was the portion of your fathers. Whom he spared to slay famine and pestilence have slain.”