“Give it to me!” she said proudly.
He took the paper from my hand and she opened it and glanced quickly at its contents.
On a sudden she broke into a bitter laugh.
“‘By my authority,’” she said, reading. She looked up, her eyes aflame. “We are indeed fallen low when we must obey the authority of such men as my Lord Danvers!—of Sir Richard Danvers, drunkard and libertine! That is how I treat his authority!” She tore the paper across and across and flung the pieces at her feet. “And now begone, sir!” she continued, pointing imperiously to the door. “Begone! you and your red-coated rabble!”
For a moment I was too astounded to speak, but I heard a low murmur from the men behind me, and the sound recalled me to myself.
“Certainly I will be going, madam,” I replied. “I could no longer stay in a house where so little respect is paid to the king’s authority. And I am not at all sure,” I continued slowly, “that I should be exceeding my duty if I were to arrest you also!”
“Arrest me?”
The words sprang from her lips in a tone of blank amazement, then she drew her queenly figure erect and gazed at me with such a tempest of wrath and scorn in her eyes as no words of mine can picture, and I saw her breast heave with the passion she strove in vain to control. I could well believe that never previously in all her life had she been so addressed.
“Certainly!” I answered harshly. “You seem to forget, madam,” I continued, pointing to the fragments of paper that lay between us, “that you have committed nothing short of treason in so destroying the king’s warrant. But I have no time to waste further words upon you!” I added rudely; for I saw how I could hurt her pride.
“The king’s authority!” she cried passionately. “The authority that sends such men as you to insult women! I would to God my servants had been present, for they should have flogged you, sir—flogged you from the village, and the ragged hirelings with you!”