“You beast! You devil!” she panted. “God will punish you! I shall spend my every breath in praying Him to punish you as you deserve. You murderer! You hound! And I like a poor simpleton was heeding your false words. I was believing you sincere in your repentance of the wrong you have done me. But now you have shown me....”
“How have I hurt you in what I have done to Lionel?” he cut in, a little amazed by so much vehemence.
“Hurt me!” she cried, and on the words grew cold and calm again with very scorn. “I thank God it is beyond your power to hurt me. And I thank you for correcting my foolish misconception of you, my belief in your pitiful pretence that it was your aim to save me. I would not accept salvation at your murderer’s hands. Though, indeed, I shall not be put to it. Rather,” she pursued, a little wildly now in her deep mortification, “are you like to sacrifice me to your own vile ends, whatever they may be. But I shall thwart you, Heaven helping me. Be sure I shall not want courage for that.” And with a shuddering moan she covered her face, and stood swaying there before him.
He looked on with a faint, bitter smile, understanding her mood just as he understood her dark threat of thwarting him.
“I came,” he said quietly, “to bring you the assurance that he has got safely away, and to tell you upon what manner of errand I have sent him.”
Something compelling in his voice, the easy assurance with which he spoke, drew her to stare at him again.
“I mean Lionel, of course,” he said, in answer to her questioning glance. “That scene between us—the blow and the swoon and the rest of it—was all make-believe. So afterwards the shooting. My challenge to Marzak was a ruse to gain time—to avoid shooting until Lionel’s head should have become so dimly visible in the dusk that none could say whether it was still there or not. My shaft went wide of him, as I intended. He is swimming round the head with my message to Sir John Killigrew. He was a strong swimmer in the old days, and should easily reach his goal. That is what I came to tell you.”
For a long spell she continued to stare at him in silence.
“You are speaking the truth?” she asked at last, in a small voice.
He shrugged. “You will have a difficulty in perceiving the object I might serve by falsehood.”