"Your own!" she said—"your own you call it—villain!"

"My own, since I can keep it," quoth he. "Before you were my Lord of Dunstanwolde's you were mine—of your own free will."

"Nay, nay," she cried. "God! through some madness I knew not the awfulness of—because I was so young and had known naught but evil—and you were so base and wise."

"Was your ladyship an innocent?" he answered. "It seemed not so to me."

"An innocent of all good," she cried—"of all things good on earth—of all that I know now, having seen manhood and honour."

"His Grace of Osmonde has not been told this," he said; "and I should make it all plain to him."

"What do you ask, devil?" she broke forth. "What is't you ask?"

"That you shall not be the Duchess of Osmonde," he said, drawing near to her; "that you shall be the wife of Sir John Oxon, as you once called yourself for a brief space, though no priest had mumbled over us—"

"Who was't divorced us?" she said, gasping; "for I was an honest thing, though I knew no other virtue. Who was't divorced us?"

"I confess," he answered, bowing, "that 'twas I—for the time being. I was young, and perhaps fickle—"

"And you left me," she cried, "and I found that you had come but for a bet—and since I so bore myself that you could not boast, and since I was not a rich woman whose fortune would be of use to you, you followed another and left me—me!"

"As his Grace of Osmonde will when I tell him my story," he answered. "He is not one to brook that such things can be told of the mother of his heirs."

She would have shrieked aloud but that she clutched her throat in time.

"Tell him!" she cried, "tell him, and see if he will hear you. Your word against mine!"

"Think you I do not know that full well," he answered, and he brought forth a little package folded in silk. "Why have I done naught but threaten till this time? If I went to him without proof, he would run me through with his sword as I were a mad dog. But is there another woman in England from whose head her lover could ravish a lock as long and black as this?"

He unfolded the silk, and let other silk unfold itself, a great and thick ring of raven hair which uncoiled its serpent length, and though he held it high, was long enough after surging from his hand to lie upon the floor.

"Merciful God!" she cried, and shuddering, hid her face.