I bowed. “I thank you, sir, and these gentlemen very heartily. You have but to command me now. I find that I have to-day the best will in the world toward fighting. I trust that your Honour does not deem it necessary to send me back to gaol?”
“Virginia has no gaol for Captain Percy,” he answered gravely. “She has only grateful thanks and fullest sympathy.”
I glanced at him keenly. “Then I hold myself at your command, sir, when I shall have seen and spoken with my wife.”
He looked at the floor, and they one and all held their peace.
“Madam,” I said to Lady Wyatt, “I have been watching your ladyship’s face. Will you tell me why it is so very full of pity, and why there are tears in your eyes?”
She shrank back in her chair with a little cry, and Rolfe stepped toward me, then turned sharply aside. “I cannot!” he cried. “I that know——”
I drew myself up to meet the blow, whatever it might be. “I demand of you my wife, Sir Francis Wyatt,” I said. “If there is ill news to be told, be so good as to tell it quickly. If she is sick, or hath been sent away to England——”
The Governor made as if to speak, then turned and flung out his hands to his wife. “ ’Tis woman’s work, Margaret!” he cried. “Tell him!”
More merciful than the men, she came to me at once, the tears running down her cheeks, and laid one trembling hand upon my arm. “She was a brave lady, Captain Percy,” she said. “Bear it as she would have had you bear it.”
“I am bearing it, madam,” I answered at length. “ ‘She was a brave lady.’ May it please your ladyship to go on?”