“You are right, sir,” she answered quickly. “I will end it, and spare myself the further insult of your ‘honest admiration.’ There are depths below depths of infamy and shame. But if admiration is based upon kindred qualities of spirit, I can conceive no greater degradation than to be the object of your passion.” Yet as she spoke I saw that the colour had forsaken her face and she pressed her hand against her side, as if in sudden pain. Aye, others saw it too, for, “Lettice, you are ill!” her sister cried, hastening to her assistance. But my lady put her aside.
“No, no,” she cried passionately. “It is nothing—nothing! Is not this the hour of my triumph? And shall I not take it? Shall I not——” She broke off abruptly with a slight shudder, then with a sudden change of manner she ran to the terrace wall and beckoned to the expectant crowd below.
“Look there,” she cried fiercely, flinging out her arm towards me. “There is the man before whom for many days we have cowered and trembled, who has held our safety and our lives in the hollow of his hand; there is the man who has called himself our master—our master—yours and mine—mine! Look well upon him now!”
A fierce shout answered her words and the crowd pressed forward to the foot of the steps with menacing cries and curses, in which the voices of the women joined the loudest.
“Give him to us!” a voice shouted, and the cry was quickly caught up and repeated. “Aye, give him to us! To the cliffs with him!”
“To the cliffs, say you?” cried a wild-eyed woman shrilly, darting up the steps and endeavouring to push her way past Sampson Dare. “To the gallows with him! ’Twas such as he that hung my boy to the sign-post of the inn for following King Monmouth! Aye, and played their drums the while to drown his dying cries! This for you—butcher!” She flung a clod of earth that struck me full in the face, and above the fierce shout of approval that greeted her words, mingled with those of “butcher!” and “to the sign-post with him!” I heard my lady give a hard, cruel laugh at my discomfiture. Stung more by this than all the indignities heaped upon me, I rallied all my strength and faced them squarely at the head of the steps.
“Peace, you hounds,” I cried sternly. “You who yelp so loudly now for James would, at a turn of Fortune’s wheel, bark louder still—for William! Not with such as you have I to deal. But for you, madam!” I cried hoarsely, turning to my lady, who stood pale and erect, her eyes shining with defiance and a light I could not read—“you, who knowing better, lure these senseless hinds to ruin with a cunning worthy of yourself and of your cause—to you, I say, the debt between us is no light one. Look to yourself in the day that I repay you for this morning’s work!”
In the vehemence of my passion my wound reopened, and with the world receding from my fading vision I fell back senseless in the arms of Sampson Dare.
CHAPTER XII
OF THE GENTLEMAN ABOARD THE GOOD SHIP “PRIDE OF DEVON”
For exactly how long my swoon lasted, to this day I can but hazard a vague conjecture. But with returning consciousness I found myself lying upon a heap of straw in the stable I have before mentioned, with the steward bending over me busily engaged in re-bandaging my wound. Beyond him, near to the doorway, lounged Sampson Dare, and in the yard without I caught a glimpse of three or four servants belonging to the manor, all of them fully armed, and of the youth Martin holding the bridle of my own impatient sorrel.