“All this was I told,” she pursued as if he had not spoken, “and all did I refuse to believe because my heart was given to you. Yet... yet of what have you made proof to-day?”
“Of forbearance,” said he shortly.
“Forbearance?” she echoed, and her lips writhed in a smile of weary irony. “Surely you mock me!”
He set himself to explain.
“I have told you what Sir John had done. I have told you that the greater part of it—and matter all that touched my honour—I know Sir John to have done long since. Yet I suffered it in silence and contempt. Was that to show myself easily stirred to ruthlessness? What was it but forbearance? When, however, he carries his petty huckster’s rancour so far as to seek to choke for me my source of happiness in life and sends your brother to affront me, I am still so forbearing that I recognize your brother to be no more than a tool and go straight to the hand that wielded him. Because I know of your affection for Sir John I gave him such latitude as no man of honour in England would have given him.”
Then seeing that she still avoided his regard, still sat in that frozen attitude of horror at learning that the man she loved had imbrued his hands with the blood of another whom she also loved, his pleading quickened to a warmer note. He flung himself upon his knees beside her chair, and took in his great sinewy hands the slender fingers which she listlessly surrendered. “Rose,” he cried, and his deep voice quivered with intercession, “dismiss all that you have heard from out your mind. Consider only this thing that has befallen. Suppose that Lionel my brother came to you, and that, having some measure of power and authority to support him, he swore to you that you should never wed me, swore to prevent this marriage because he deemed you such a woman as could not bear my name with honour to myself; and suppose that to all this he added insult to the memory of your dead father, what answer would you return him? Speak, Rose! Be honest with thyself and me. Deem yourself in my place, and say in honesty if you can still condemn me for what I have done. Say if it differs much from what you would wish to do in such a case as I have named.”
Her eyes scanned now his upturned face, every line of which was pleading to her and calling for impartial judgment. Her face grew troubled, and then almost fierce. She set her hands upon his shoulders, and looked deep into his eyes.
“You swear to me, Noll, that all is as you have told it me—you have added naught, you have altered naught to make the tale more favourable to yourself?”
“You need such oaths from me?” he asked, and she saw sorrow spread upon his countenance.
“If I did I should not love thee, Noll. But in such an hour I need your own assurance. Will you not be generous and bear with me, strengthen me to withstand anything that may be said hereafter?”
“As God’s my witness, I have told you true in all,” he answered solemnly.
She sank her head to his shoulder. She was weeping softly, overwrought by this climax to all that in silence and in secret she had suffered since he had come a-wooing her.
“Then,” she said, “I believe you acted rightly. I believe with you that no man of honour could have acted otherwise. I must believe you, Noll, for did I not, then I could believe in naught and hope for naught. You are as a fire that has seized upon the better part of me and consumed it all to ashes that you may hold it in your heart. I am content so you be true.”
“True I shall ever be, sweetheart,” he whispered fervently. “Could I be less since you are sent to make me so?”
She looked at him again, and now she was smiling wistfully through her tears.
“And you will bear with Peter?” she implored him.
“He shall have no power to anger me,” he answered. “I swear that too. Do you know that but to-day he struck me?”
“Struck you? You did not tell me that!”
“My quarrel was not with him but with the rogue that sent him. I laughed at the blow. Was he not sacred to me?”
“He is good at heart, Noll,” she pursued. “In time he will come to love you as you deserve, and you will come to know that he, too, deserves your love.”
“He deserves it now for the love he bears to you.”
“And you will think ever thus during the little while of waiting that perforce must lie before us?”
“I shall never think otherwise, sweet. Meanwhile I shall avoid him, and that no harm may come should he forbid me Godolphin Court I’ll even stay away. In less than a year you will be of full age, and none may hinder you to come and go. What is a year, with such hope as mine to still impatience?”
She stroked his face. “Art very gentle with me ever, Noll,” she murmured fondly. “I cannot credit you are ever harsh to any, as they say.”
“Heed them not,” he answered her. “I may have been something of all that, but you have purified me, Rose. What man that loved you could be aught but gentle.” He kissed her, and stood up. “I had best be going now,” he said. “I shall walk along the shore towards Trefusis Point to-morrow morning. If you should chance to be similarly disposed....”
She laughed, and rose in her turn. “I shall be there, dear Noll.”
“‘Twere best so hereafter,” he assured her, smiling, and so took his leave.
She followed him to the stair-head, and watched him as he descended with eyes that took pride in the fine upright carriage of that stalwart, masterful lover.
Chapter III.
The Forge
Sir Oliver’s wisdom in being the first to bear Rosamund the story of that day’s happenings was established anon when Master Godolphin returned home. He went straight in quest of his sister; and in a frame of mind oppressed by fear and sorrow, for Sir John, by his general sense of discomfiture at the hands of Sir Oliver and by the anger begotten of all this he was harsh in manner and disposed to hector.
“Madam,” he announced abruptly, “Sir John is like to die.”
The astounding answer she returned him—that is, astounding to him—did not tend to soothe his sorely ruffled spirit.
“I know,” she said. “And I believe him to deserve no less. Who deals in calumny should be prepared for the wages of it.”
He stared at her in a long, furious silence, then exploded into oaths, and finally inveighed against her unnaturalness and pronounced her bewitched by that foul dog Tressilian.
“It is fortunate for me,” she answered him composedly, “that he was here before you to give me the truth of this affair.” Then her assumed calm and the anger with which she had met his own all fell away from her. “Oh, Peter, Peter,” she cried in anguish, “I hope that Sir John will recover. I am distraught by this event. But be just, I implore you. Sir Oliver has told me how hard-driven he had been.”
“He shall be driven harder yet, as God’s
