“So that,” insisted Sir John, determined to leave her no loophole whatsoever, “so that until that night you had naturally continued to believe Sir Oliver to be the murderer of your brother?”
She hung her head in silence, realizing that the truth could not prevail here since she had hampered it with a falsehood, which was now being dragged into the light.
“Answer me!” Sir John commanded.
“There is no need to answer,” said Lord Henry slowly, in a voice of pain, his eyes lowered to the table. “There can, of course, be but one answer. Mistress Rosamund has told us that he did not abduct her forcibly; that she went with him of her own free will and married him; and she has urged that circumstance as a proof of her conviction of his innocence. Yet now it becomes plain that at the time she left England with him she still believed him to be her brother’s slayer. Yet she asks us to believe that he did not abduct her.” He spread his hands again and pursed his lips in a sort of grieved contempt.
“Let us make an end, a’ God’s name!” said Sir John, rising.
“Ah, wait!” she cried. “I swear that all that I have told you is true—all but the matter of the abduction. I admit that, but I condoned it in view of what I have since learnt.”
“She admits it!” mocked Sir John.
But she went on without heeding him. “Knowing what he has suffered through the evil of others, I gladly own him my husband, hoping to make some amends to him for the part I had in his wrongs. You must believe me, sirs. But if you will not, I ask you is his action of yesterday to count for naught? Are you not to remember that but for him you would have had no knowledge of my whereabouts?”
They stared at her in fresh surprise.
“To what do you refer now, mistress? What action of his is responsible for this?”