“You care for him, Sylvia?” he said, between inquiry and wonder. “Well, well! We are both fools together, child. The man is a dastard, a blackguard, a Judas, to be repaid with betrayal for betrayal. Forget him, girl. Believe me, he isn’t worth a thought.”
“Terence!” She looked in her turn into that distorted face. “Are you mad?” she asked him.
“Very nearly,” he answered, with a laugh that was horrible to hear.
She drew back and away from him, bewildered and horrified. Slowly she rose to her feet. She controlled with difficulty the deep emotion swaying her. “Tell me,” she said slowly, speaking with obvious effort, “what will they do to Captain Tremayne?”
“What will they do to him?” He looked at her. He was smiling. “They will shoot him, of course.”
“And you wish it!” she denounced him in a whisper of horror.
“Above all things,” he answered. “A more poetic justice never overtook a blackguard.”
“Why do you call him that? What do you mean?”
“I will tell you—afterwards, after they have shot him; unless the truth comes out before.”
“What truth do you mean? The truth of how Samoval came by his death?”