Doreen replied with studied calmness: 'You do well to drop disguise, Mr. Cassidy, since I know you as you are. If they are in your care, God help them!'
The marble beauty! Her scorn ate into his flesh like vitriol. He had, with long patience, shown a fictitious better side to her in vain. It was with fiendish pleasure that he exposed the real one.
But the contempt which knitted the maiden's brow and distended her finely-cut nostrils proved too much for the giant's pot-valour. He tried to wink with the slyness which used to keep supper-tables in a roar, but shrank under her steady glance, and retiring with a growl, discomfited, slammed the door. Then, the spell removed, cursing himself and her, he went through a pantomime of anathema, battering the panels from within with heavy fists till the turnkeys ran out, supposing him to have been attacked.
'She treats me like dirt!' he gnashed out between foul oaths. 'Yet, plaze the Lord, I'll brand myself on her memory till her dying day. Damn her! A fight, is it? A fight be it--deadly--to the last gasp. We'll see if her ladyship will be so hoity-toity then!'
The frown passed not from the maiden's face with the vanishing of Cassidy. He there, in apparent authority! His presence boded little good to either of the dear prisoners.
What a queer character was Cassidy's! Outwardly merry and good-humoured, he was by nature coldly fierce, calculating, callous. Reckless of life himself, its value to others made no impression on him. Playful and unpitying, commanding the smile and heeding not the sigh, he was a human paradox. The more Doreen considered him the less could she understand such a person, being herself true and impulsive and open as the day.
'We will go to Ely Place at once,' she said hurriedly. 'Lord Clare must and shall help us.'
The ladies walked their horses in order that panting Mrs. Gillin might tell all she knew. Tone's doom was fixed. Of that she was sure. Neither the chancellor nor anybody else could avert his passing. But Terence--so careless and so joyous a short while ago--his case was harrowing. Both were specially interested in him. Madam Gillin had heard for certain that his trial was to come on within a week, and that his henchman had been well triangled only a few hours since to extort evidence against his master. His butchers had even stopped their practical joke at intervals in order to give him time to pull his thoughts together. Did he say anything? Nothing that the narrator was aware of. Her nurse, old Jug, witnessed the scourging, and scurried home all of a tremble at the horrid spectacle. In her presence he had writhed and shrieked for mercy--had gnawed his tongue lest it should escape control--had swooned--and was then tossed upon some straw--half dead, but faithful so far.
Sara clung to her saddle-pommel as she listened, lest she too should swoon; and it dawned upon Doreen that they were out on a fool's errand. Life is a bitter gift to many; yet, charged as we are with illusory hopes, what suffering must be ours ere we master its full bitterness! She came out imagining that mercy was alive, that justice was only torpid, that she could plead with human creatures to whom justice and mercy were precious. How mad! For mercy she saw with terrible clearness the triangle; for justice, the shade of Cassidy. The Valley of the Shadow was of weary length, and she was groping in it darkly still. Nothing could come of this expedition; of that she felt convinced. Tone and Terence would be hanged. Terence, who held her heart--she knew it now with no tinge of shame, and gloried in it. She promised herself to be present at his trial, strengthening him by her sympathy. He might not be hers in this world. She had refused the boon of his affection when he had offered it; had presumed to preach to him--worse--had doubted him. Blind, fatuous girl! How justly punished! He was to die a martyr, blessed in that his life was to be in mercy shortened. She would tend his lowly bed, plant flowers on it, then take the veil and spend in prayer and vigil such days as it might be her lot to linger through. They would not be many. Heaven was very deaf. Surely this little boon of a speedy flitting might be vouchsafed to her jaded spirit? The tendency to asceticism which is buried more or less deep in all of us was asserting itself in this dark hour over Doreen. She looked forward to the cloister and the monastic habit with exultation.
By the time the party turned into Ely Place, Doreen had lost her courage and her hope. She felt as shy almost as Sara--panted only for the swift coming of the shot that she might stagger away into the covert.