"She and Brand are in love, and by my honour, Browne, I'm glad, yes glad. That man is royal, the real thing, which I'm not. By our Lady, if you'd seen him fight the Gigantic!
"And all that time in the cave, six mortal days while he lay raving mad with his wound, he called to her: 'Margaret! Margaret!' Look what he was before, and what he's fallen to because he was loyal."
"In love with him," said Browne, under his breath.
"Of course she is, I saw them part. Didn't she burst into tears, so that she had to run away."
"The message," Browne's voice was broken now; "it saved her reason. I thought——"
"The message," said Lancaster, "I forged that message."
"Forged it?"
"Of course. How could I come to her without a message? That's what Brand would have written if he could. Do you think it was easy for me bringing that message?"
"I'd never have dared," said Browne, humbly. "Fancy lying to her!"
"Well, I'm her cousin, you know, and you'd have dared all right if you had been there. He was conscious, the fever gone—awful weak, of course, and he couldn't have written a letter to save his life. I did it out of my own head, too, and I hate writing letters. That night I climbed the cliff, and at the top found a young fisherman asleep. The man was in hiding, a criminal, I suppose; but he helped me, and we got Brand up with ropes. Neither of us knew that Ulster was dead, or that the royal yacht was out searching for Brand, or that Lyonesse was retaken for the Queen. I found out all that afterwards.