“Wait!” said Lord Henry, raising his hand. “Give me leave.” He confronted her very seriously. “This... this is a grave statement, mistress. Have you any proof—anything that you conceive to be a proof—of what you are saying?”
But Sir John was not to be repressed. “’Tis but the lying tale this villain told her. He has bewitched her, I say. ’Tis plain as the sunlight yonder.”
Sir Oliver laughed outright at that. His mood was growing exultant, buoyant, and joyous, and this was the first expression of it. “Bewitched her? You’re determined never to lack for a charge. First ’twas piracy, then abduction and murder, and now ’tis witchcraft!”
“Oh, a moment, pray!” cried Lord Henry, and he confesses to some heat at this point. “Do you seriously tell us, Mistress Rosamund, that it was Lionel Tressilian who murdered Peter Godolphin?”
“Seriously?” she echoed, and her lips were twisted in a little smile of scorn. “I not merely tell it you, I swear it here in the sight of God. It was Lionel who murdered my brother and it was Lionel who put it about that the deed was Sir Oliver’s. It was said that Sir Oliver had run away from the consequences of something discovered against him, and I to my shame believed the public voice. But I have since discovered the truth....”
“The truth, do you say, mistress?” cried the impetuous Sir John in a voice of passionate contempt. “The truth....”
Again his Lordship was forced to intervene.
“Have patience, man,” he admonished the knight. “The truth will prevail in the end, never fear, Killigrew.”
“Meanwhile we are wasting time,” grumbled Sir John, and on that fell moodily silent.
“Are we further to understand you to say, mistress,” Lord Henry resumed, “that the prisoner’s disappearance from Penarrow was due not to flight, as was supposed, but to his having been trepanned by order of his brother?”