t."

"She admits it!" mocked Sir John.

But she went on without heeding him. "Knowing what he has suffered
through the evil of others, I gladly own him my husband, hoping to make
some amends to him for the part I had in his wrongs. You must believe
me, sirs. But if you will not, I ask you is his action of yesterday to
count for naught? Are you not to remember that but for him you would
have had no knowledge of my whereabouts?"

They stared at her in fresh surprise.

"To what do you refer now, mistress? What action of his is responsible
for this?"

"Do you need to ask? Are you so set on murdering him that you affect
ignorance? Surely you know that it was he dispatched Lionel to inform
you of my whereabouts?"

Lord Henry tells us that at this he smote the table with his open palm,
displaying an anger he could no longer curb. "This is too much!" he
cried. "Hitherto I have believed you sincere but misguided and mistaken.
But so deliberate a falsehood transcends all bounds. What has come to
you, girl? Why, Lionel himself told us the circumstances of his escape
from the galeasse. Himself he told us how that villain had him flogged
and then flung him into the sea for dead."

"Ah!" said Sir Oliver between his teeth. "I recognize Lionel there! He
would be false to the end, of course. I should have thought of that."

Rosamund at bay, in a burst of regal anger leaned forward to face Lord
Henry and the others. "He lied, the base, treacherous dog!" she cried.

"Madam," Sir John rebuked her, "you are speaking of one who is all but
dead."

"And more than damned," added Sir Oliver. "Sirs," he cried, "you prove
naught but your own stupidity when you accuse this gentle lady of
falsehood."

"We have heard enough, sir," Lord Henry interrupted.

"Have you so, by God!" he roared, stung suddenly to anger. "You shall
hear yet a little more. The truth will prevail, you have said yourself;
and prevail the truth shall since this sweet lady so desires it."

He was flushed, and his light eyes played over them like points of
steel, and like points of steel they carried a certain measure of
compulsion. He had stood before them half-mocking and indifferent,
resigned to hang and desiring the thing might be over and ended as
speedily as possible. But all that was before he suspected that life
could still have anything to offer him, whilst he conceived that
Rosamund was definitely lost to him. True, he had the memory of a
certain tendern