“Simply because we can’t. By the time we should get our vagabonds in their saddles, and ride back, every knave of them would be gone. I saw they were about to break up; and that’s why I came so quickly away. Yes—yes!” continued he, reflectingly, “they’d be scattered to the four winds, before we could get back. Besides—besides—he might slip off through the darkness, and give trouble to find him afterwards! What matters to me about the others? I must make sure of him; and that will be best done in the daylight. To-morrow he shall be mine; the day after, the lieutenant of the Tower shall have him; and then the Star Chamber; and then—the scaffold!”
“But, captain,” said Stubbs, in answer to the soliloquised speech, only a portion of which he had heard. “What about our worthy host, Sir Marmaduke? Can’t you take him?”
“At any time—ha! ha! ha! And hark you, Stubbs! I’ve a word for you on that delicate subject. I’ve promised you promotion. The queen, on my recommendation, will see that you have it. But you get my endorsement, only on conditions—on conditions, do you hear?”
“I do. What conditions, captain?”
“That you say nothing—either of where you’ve been, what you’ve heard, or what you’ve seen this night—till I give you the cue to speak.”
“Not a word, by Ged! I promise that.”
“Very well. It’ll be to your interest, my worthy cornet, to keep your promise, if you ever expect me to call you captain. In time you may understand my reasons for binding you to secrecy, and in time you shall. Meanwhile, not a whisper of where we’ve been to-night—least of all to Sir Marmaduke Wade. Ah! my noble knight!” continued the captain, speaking to himself, “I’ve now got the sun shining that will thaw the ice of your aristocratic superciliousness! And you, indifferent dame! If I mistake not your sex and your sort, ere another moon has flung its mystic influence over your mind, I shall tread your indifference in the dust, make you open those loving arms, twine them around the neck of Richard Scarthe, and cry—‘Be mine, dearest! mine for ever!’”
The speaker rose exultingly in his stirrups, as if he had already felt that thrilling embrace; but, in a moment after, sank back into his saddle, and sate in a cowed and cowering attitude.
It was but the natural revulsion of an over-triumphant feeling—the reaction that succeeds the indulgence of an unreal and selfish conceit.
His sudden start upward had roused afresh the pain in his wounded arm. It recalled a series of circumstances calculated to humiliate him;—his defeat—the finding of the glove—his suspicion of a rival—that assignation scene, that almost made it a certainty.