He lifted his head; his face was flushed, his eyebrows drawn together.
“I will not be a perfect fool,” he said haughtily. “All they who were in this plot shall pay for it as certainly—”
“As you shall pay for what you do, Sir John,” she interrupted. “As their crimes of loyalty and courage in a losing cause shall be punished—so shall lying treachery and false-heartedness and hard cruelty be repaid—” she laughed suddenly. “You in the judgment seat—you!” she cried, with her hand to her side.
“Yes—I,” he said imperiously. “When your Jacobites can mount it let them judge me—meanwhile—I think he who can hold the sword wields the sword—as I shall do.”
She turned from him.
“I have no more to say,” she said.
“Nor I,” he answered.
With her hand still at her side she crossed to the door; there she stopped and turned to face him.
“I was wrong,” she said steadily. “I have something more to say—there are those whom I can save without asking your mercy, the mercy that you have not, Sir John.”
He looked at her over his shoulder.