When I could understand him again, he was telling me that if I would promise to marry him he would do all that I wished for Sir Hubert, and more, he would guarantee his safety until he reached Holland, and, if needs be, would personally conduct him to a port from which he could sail.
'But, be generous,' besought I, 'do all that without the heavy price being paid that you have named.'
'Heavy?'
He frowned.
'Yes. Most heavy. I cannot pay it! I cannot! But be generous,' I pleaded, 'be generous!'
Sir Claudius, seeing me so exceedingly concerned about his rival, fell into an awful rage.
'Generous!' cried he. 'Not I. It is for you to be generous to me—and to him. For I swear unless you promise to marry me—unless I have your promise before night, he shall hang to-morrow morning.'
And with that he went out, slamming the door behind him.
I fell back in my chair, weeping bitterly.
Was ever a more hideous snare laid for a poor girl? I thought with horror of the woes and threatened death of my dear knight. I imagined I saw him lying in the dungeon of which Sir Claudius had been speaking. How very hard was his fate! Not a prisoner of war, he had simply been kidnapped by brigands, as a girl, or a child might have been! Six to one, they had overcome him by sheer physical strength. And he had the misery of knowing that I also was a captive in their power. How he would chafe at the confinement which kept him from my side! What would be his feelings when his jailer told him that he must prepare to die upon the morrow? And on the gallows, too! Despair would be his portion, horror and despair.