The great gentleman looked at her like a man dumfounded, hardly able to grasp the meaning of that steel barrel and that little circle of shadow that held death in the compass of a thumb’s nail.
“Assuredly I will tell you the truth,” he said, at last.
“Then let me hear it.”
He grappled himself together, gave a glance at my lady, who had sunk again into the window-seat, and then met Barbara eye to eye.
“Since you seek the truth at the pistol’s point, my child, I will tell it you, though no man on earth should have dragged it from me at the sword’s point. Good God!” And he put his hand to his forehead and looked from mother to daughter as though unwilling to speak, even under such compulsion.
Barbara watched him, believing he was gaining leisure to elaborate some lie.
“You are determined to hear everything?”
She nodded.
“Have it then, girl, to your eternal shame! Why should the unclean, disloyal dead make the living suffer? Much good may the truth do all of us, for none are without our sins.”
He spoke out in a few harsh, solemn words—words that were meant to carry the sorrow and the travail and the anger of a great heart. It was the same tale that he had told John Gore, yet emphasized more grimly to suit the moment. And when he had ended it he put his head between his hands and groaned, and then looked up at Barbara as though trying to pity her for the shock of his confession.