“Greeting!” said I, then I fixed my gaze sternly on him, for if I was right in the opinions I held all words of welcome were out of place between us; and continued, “Sir James, I have not come to join you—not at present, at any rate. That is not the business which brings me here. I have come to ask you if you know where my mistress, Grace O’Malley, is?”
I was in no humour to pick and choose what forms of speech I should use, and I spoke out sharply.
“Sir,” said he, frowning, all his cordiality disappearing instantly, “what should I know of your mistress, Grace O’Malley?” And there was a trace of mockery in the way he uttered the last four words.
“Answer me, Sir James,” said I again. “Nay, you need not, for I can see that you do know.”
“I have heard something,” said he, at length.
“Do you know how the matter stands between her and Desmond?” asked I. “Do you know that she was his guest—invited by him to Askeaton? Do you know that she has tried to bind him to the cause? Do you know that he has told her that he has a passion for her, that he holds her as a prisoner in one of his castles because she will not submit to him, and that he has threatened to give her up to the English, and to make common cause with them against you, if she will not yield herself to him?”
Fitzmaurice said nothing, but sat scowling at me, and biting his lip.
“Have you no answer?” asked I. “You say you have heard something; perhaps you knew all this before I left you at Tralee.”
Then changing my tone to one almost of entreaty, I said, “Sir James, bethink yourself before it is too late. Nothing but evil can come from these acts of Desmond,” and I gave him the message with which Richard Burke had charged me. “Grace O’Malley,” I concluded, “must be set free, and that at once. Do you know where she is?”