“Oh, we all say that; but I am not in the least curious. If you intended to marry her, then were my mouth sealed. Very well; since you will have it, and I take your word as a gentleman pledged that you will say nothing to the girl of this until you are clear of Oxford, know that I was once her betrothed. She was to have been my wife, and would have been my wife to-day had her father not fallen.”
“Your wife!”
“Yes. Her father gave me permission to pay my court to her. She could not have been much more than sixteen then, and I was her first lover, a personage that a girl never forgets. At first she was frightened, but that stage did not last long. Her father’s ruin changed my plans, and I refused to marry her. I announced this refusal to her in the seclusion of my own room in Whitehall and——”
“Sir, you lie!”
Armstrong’s sword seemed to spring of its own will from the scabbard, and his hand drew it a-swish through the air with the hiss of a deadly serpent. The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders, but did not move. The three words of his opponent had been spoken very quietly, despite his impulsive action. De Courcy did not raise his voice as he asked: “Which of my statements do you question?”
“No matter for that. We fight on this phrase in Scotland. No man ever called me liar and lived.”
“’T is a coarse phrase, I admit, and did I not represent my King—were I as free as you—you should have had my response in steel ere this. But I cannot wreck the King in a private quarrel of my own. Whether you killed me, or I you, ’t would be equally disastrous to his Majesty.”
“I care nothing for the King. Draw, you poltroon, or I shall kill you where you sit.”
“My dear Armstrong, I refuse to be murdered under a misapprehension on your part. I have said nothing against the girl. ’T is all your own hot blood. And indeed your brawling is the girl’s greatest danger; she might well tremble if she knew your present occupation. If you run your nimble sword through me, you give the girl to the fate that befel her father.”
At the first word of danger to Frances the point of Armstrongs blade sank to the floor, and he stood hesitating. A gleam of triumph glinted and died in the eye of the Frenchman. He knew he was the victor, although the chance he had run at one stage of the game almost made his heart stop beating.