“Curious that,” he had said—“an eagle's cry. I have not heard it these many months, not since I left the hills of Aragon.”
Thereafter he had continued to the end.
Considering her now, his glance inscrutable, he said:
“You weep, madame. Tell me, what is it that has moved you—the contemplation of my sufferings, or of your own duplicity?”
She started up, very white, her eyes scared.
“I do not understand you. What do you mean, sir?”
“I mean, madame, that God did not give you so much beauty that you should use it in the decoying of an unfortunate, that you should hire it at an assassin's fee to serve the crapulous King of Spain.”
He rose and towered before her, a figure at once of anger, dignity, and some compassion.
“So much ardour from youth and beauty to age and infirmity was in itself suspicious. The Catholic King has the guile of Satan, I remembered. I wondered, and hoped my suspicions might be unfounded. Yet prudence made me test them, that the danger, if it existed, should manifest itself and be destroyed. So I came to tell you all my story, so that if you did the thing I feared, you might come to the knowledge of precisely what it was you did. I have learnt whilst here that what I suspected is—alas! quite true. You were a lure, a decoy sent to work my ruin, to draw me into a trap where daggers waited for me. Why did you do this? What was the bribe that could corrupt you, lovely lady?”
Sobs shook her. Her will gave way before his melancholy sternness.