Her nerve was giving way against the stubborn detachment of the man. She felt herself helpless, and her force ineffective. Life was breaking up round her. The last man she had confronted had spurned her in the end—through a mistake, it was true—but the opportunity had been given him by her own loss of grip in the bewilderment of a crisis. This one was spurning her too. But she went on.
“He performed his work faithfully from that day forward, as your Royal Highness knew when you took him to the North. His services are better known to you, Sir, than to anyone else. He gave himself up to Captain Callandar as the last proof that he could take no part with the rebels. He threw away his life.”
“That, at least, is true,” said the Duke, with a sneer. He was becoming exasperated, and the emphasis which he put on the word ‘that’ brought the slow blood to her face. She looked at him as though she saw him across some mud-befouled stream. Even now her pride rose above the despair in her heart. He was not sensitive, but her expression stung him.
“I am accustomed to truth,” she replied.
He turned his back. There was a silence.
“I came to ask for Archie’s life,” she said, in a toneless, steady voice, “but I will go, asking nothing. Your Royal Highness has nothing to give that he or I would stoop to take at your hands.”
He stood doggedly, without turning, and he did not move until the sound of her sweeping skirts had died away in the anteroom. Then he went out, a short, stoutish figure passing along the dusty corridors of Holyrood, and entered a room from which came the ring of men’s voices.
A party of officers in uniform got up as he came in. Some were playing cards. He went up to one of the players and took those he held from between his fingers.
“Give me your hand, Walden,” said he, “and for God’s sake get us a bottle of wine. Damn me, but I hate old women! They should have their tongues cut out.”