Part 32 (2/2)
”Do not suppose,” said he, ”that I could not support my word by proofs if called upon to do so”
”Proofs?” She stared at him, wide-eyed a moment Then her lip curled
”And that no doubt was the reason of your flight when you heard that the Queen's pursuivants were co in response to the public voice to call you to account”
He stood at gaze a ht?” he said
”What fable's that?”
”You will tell me next that you did not flee That that is another false charge against you?”
”So,” he said slowly, ”it was believed I fled!”
And then light burst upon him, to dazzle and stun him It was so inevitably what must have been believed, and yet it had never crossed his mind O the damnable simplicity of it! At another tiation, perhaps
But, happening when it did, the answer to it caly and no man troubled to question further Thus was Lionel's task uilt made doubly sure in the eyes of all His head sank upon his breast What had he done? Could he still bla a piece of evidence? Could he still blame her if she had burnt unopened the letter which he had sent her by the hand of Pitt? What else indeed could any suppose, but that he had fled? And that being so, clearly such a flight ed to be How could he blame her if she had ultimately been convinced by the only reasonable assu he had done rose now like a tide about hiroaned, like a man in pain ”My God!”
He looked at her, and then averted his glance again, unable now to endure the haggard, strained yet fearless gaze of those brave eyes of hers
”What else, indeed, could you believe?” hesoh his ht else but the whole vile truth,” she answered fiercely, and thereby stung hi back to his mood of resentht in that ainst him
”The truth?” he echoed, and eyed her boldly now ”Do you know the truth when you see it? We shall discover For by God's light you shall have the truth laid stark before you now, and you shall find it hideous beyond all your hideous i now in his tone and manner that it drove her to realize that so She was conscious of a faint excitement, a reflection perhaps of the wild excitean, ” whoht from the deed he fled to le left that trail of blood to entler, it assumed the level note of one who reasons i, now, that none should ever have paused to seek with certainty whence that blood proceeded, and to consider that I bore no wound in those days? Master Baine knew it, for I submitted my body to his examination, and a document was drawn up and duly attested which should have sent the Queen's pursuivants back to London with drooping tails had I been at Penarrow to receive theh her ed the existence of soone so far as to have ed by Sir Oliver; and she remembered that the matter had been brushed aside as an invention of the justice's to answer the charge of laxity in the performance of his duty, particularly as the only co-witness he could cite was Sir Andrew Flack, the parson, since deceased Sir Oliver's voice drew her attention fro ”Let us co shelter Thereby I dren suspicion uponhim, I kept silent That suspicion drew to certainty when the wo ofthe very worst of me, made an end of our betrothal and thereby branded nation swelled against me
The Queen's pursuivants were on their way to do what the justices of Truro refused to do
”So far I have given you facts Now I give you surmise--my own conclusions--but sure, the very bull's-eye of truth That dastard to whoiven sanctuary, to whom I had served as a cloak, measured my nature by his own and feared that I must prove unequal to the fresh burden to be cast upon me He feared lest under the strain of it I should speak out, advance my proofs, and so destroy hi still ed There was a certain woman--a wanton up at Malpas--who could have beenher betwixt the slayer and your brother For the affair in which Peter Godolphin met his death was a pitifully, shamefully sordid one at bottom”
For the first tin the dead?”
”Patience, n none I speak the truth of a deadones Hearand survived a deal that I ht tell you this
”That craven, then, conceived that I er to him; so he decided to reht and put aboard a vessel to be carried to Barbary and sold there as a slave
That is the truth of my disappearance And the slayer, whom I had befriended and sheltered at my own bitter cost, profited yet further by my removal God knohether the prospect of such profit was a further temptation to him In time he came to succeed me in my possessions, and at last to succeed me even in the affections of the faithless woman who once had been my affianced wife”
At last she started from the frozen patience in which she had listened hitherto ”Do you say that that Lionel?” she was beginning in a voice choked by indignation
And then Lionel spoke at last, straightening hiht attitude