"When I have let him out, I will," she answered, her eyes glowing sombrely as she nursed her wrist. In her, too, the old Adam had been raised.
"Give me the key!" he said for the last time.
"I will not," she said. "And if I did—" she continued, with a glance at Payton that reminded the unhappy McMurrough that, with the secret known, the key was no longer of use—"if I did, how would it serve you?"
The McMurrough turned his rage upon the intruder. "Devil take you, what business will it be of yours?" he cried. "Who are you to come between us, eh?"
Payton bowed. "If I offend," he said airily, "I am entirely at your service." He tapped the hilt of his sword. "You do not wear one, but I have no doubt you can use one. I shall be happy to give you satisfaction where and when you please. A time and place——"
But James did not stop to hear him out. He turned with an oath and a snarl, and went off—went off in such a manner that Flavia could not but see that the challenge was not to his taste. At another time she would have blushed for him. But his brutal violence had done more during the last ten minutes to depose his image from her heart than years of neglect and rudeness.
Payton saw him go, and, blessing the good fortune which had put him in a position to command the beauty's thanks, he turned to receive them. But Flavia was not looking at him, was not thinking of him. She had put the key in the lock and was trying to turn it. Her left wrist, however, was too weak, and the right was so strained as to be useless. She signed to him to turn the key, and he did so, and threw open the door, wondering much who was there and what it was all about.
He did not at once recognise the man who, pale and haggard, a mere ghost of himself, dragged himself up the three steps, and, exhausted by the effort, leant against the doorpost. But when Colonel John spoke and tried to thank the girl, he knew him.
He whistled. "You are Colonel Sullivan!" he said.
"The same, sir!" Colonel John murmured mechanically.