sen and stood grimly dignified in his bonds.

"Will you murder your own brother as you murdered mine?" demanded
Rosamund, speaking now for the first time, and rising as she spoke, a
faint flush coming to overspread her pallor. She saw him wince; she saw
the mocking lustful anger perish in his face, leaving it vacant for a
moment. Then it became grim again with a fresh resolve. Her words had
altered all the current of his intentions. They fixed in him a dull,
fierce rage. They silenced the explanations which he was come to offer,
and which he scorned to offer here after that taunt.

"It seems you love that--whelp, that thing that was my brother," he
said, sneering. "I wonder will you love him still when you come to be
better acquainted with him? Though, faith, naught would surprise me in
a woman and her love. Yet I am curious to see--curious to see." He
laughed. "I have a mind to gratify myself. I will not separate you--not
just yet."

He advanced upon her. "Come thou with me, lady," he commanded, and held
out his hand.

And now Lord Henry seems to have been stirred to futile action.

"At that," he writes, "I thrust myself between to shield her. 'Thou
dog,' I cried,'thou shalt be made to suffer!'

"'Suffer?' quoth he, and mocked me with his deep laugh. 'I have suffered
already. 'Tis for that reason I am here.'

"'And thou shalt suffer again, thou pirate out of hell!' I warned him.
'Thou shalt suffer for this outrage as God's my life!'

"'Shall I so?' quoth he, very calm and sinister. 'And at whose hands, I
pray you?'

"'At mine, sir, I roared, being by now stirred to a great fury.

"'At thine?' he sneered. 'Thou'lt hunt the hawk of the sea? Thou? Thou
plump partridge! Away! Hinder me not!"'

And he adds that again Sir Oliver spoke that short Arabic command,
whereupon a dozen blackamoors whirled the Queen's Lieutenant aside and
bound him to a chair.

Face to face stood now Sir Oliver with Rosamund--face to face after
five long years, and he realized that in every moment of that time the
certainty had never departed from him of some such future meeting.

"Come, lady," he bade her sternly.

A moment she looked at him with hate and loathing in the clear depths of
her deep blue eyes. Then swiftly as lightning she snatched a knife from
the board and drove it at his heart. But his hand moved as swiftly
to seize her wrist, and the knife clattered to the ground, its errand
unfulfilled.

A shuddering sob escaped