“Faith, that’s true enough!” ejaculated the bewildered Lord Henry. “A moment, Killigrew!” And again he stilled the impetuous Sir John. He looked at Sir Oliver, who in truth was very far from being the least bewildered in that company. “What do you say to that, sir?” he asked.
“To that?” echoed the almost speechless corsair. “What is there left to say?” he evaded.
“’Tis all false,” cried Sir John again. “We were witnesses of the event—you and I, Harry—and we saw....”
“You saw,” Rosamund interrupted. “But you did not know what had been concerted.”
For a moment that silenced them again. They were as men who stand upon crumbling ground, whose every effort to win to a safer footing but occasioned a fresh slide of soil. Then Sir John sneered, and made his riposte.
“No doubt she will be prepared to swear that her betrothed, Master Lionel Tressilian, accompanied her willingly upon that elopement.”
“No,” she answered. “As for Lionel Tressilian he was carried off that he might expiate his sins—sins which he had fathered upon his brother there, sins which are the subject of your other count against him.”
“Now what can you mean by that?” asked his lordship.
“That the story that Sir Oliver killed my brother is a calumny; that the murderer was Lionel Tressilian, who, to avoid detection and to complete his work, caused Sir Oliver to be kidnapped that he might be sold into slavery.”
“This is too much!” roared Sir John. “She is trifling with us, she makes white black and black white. She has been bewitched by that crafty rogue, by Moorish arts that....”