Wat still stood silent before them. Kate dropped his hand perplexed, looking into his tragic face with bewildered, uncomprehending eyes.
"Why, Wat, what is the matter, dear love—tell them everything, whatever it is. Do not fear for me," whispered Kate, her true, earnest eyes, full of all faith and love, bent upon him without doubt or question.
"I cannot," he said, hoarsely, at last; "I ought to have told you before—it is so difficult now. But I will tell you all—there is no shame in it when all is told. No, do not take my hand till I have finished."
Then quite clearly and briefly Wat recounted all that had happened to the Little Marie—not sparing himself in the matter of the Inn of the Coronation, where he had been found by Will Gordon and Barra, but chiefly insisting upon the noble self-sacrifice of the girl and her death, welcome and sweet to her because of her love and repentance.
But the tale was told on board the Sea Unicorn under a double burden of difficulty. For the teller was conscious that he ought long ago to have confessed all this to his love; and then the story itself, simple and beautiful in its facts, was riddled and blasted by the bitter comments of Barra, and tinctured to base issues by his blighting sneers.
As Wat went on Kate drooped her head on her breast and clasped her hands before her. Even the love-light was for the moment dimmed in her proud eyes, but only with indignant tears, that her love should so be put to shame before those whom she would have given her life to see compelled to hold him in honor.
The heavy weight of unbelief against which he felt himself pleading in vain, gradually proved too much for Wat Gordon. He stopped abruptly and flung his hand impatiently out.
"I cannot go on," he said; "my words are not credited—of what use is it?"
"As you say, my Lord Lochinvar, of what use is it?" sneered Barra. "That you know best yourself. You were asked a plain question—whether the maid who accompanied you on the first part of your wondrous Ulysses wanderings was the same with whom you arrived on board the Sea Unicorn. To that plain question you have only returned a very crooked answer. Have you nothing else that you can say to finish the lie in a more workmanlike fashion?"
"Jack Scarlett—Scarlett, come hither!" Wat cried, suddenly.