“Rosamund, my dear!” he said gently, and took both her hands. He looked with eyes of sorrow and concern into her white, agitated face. “Are you sufficiently rested, child?”
“Rested?” she echoed on a note of wonder that he should suppose it.
“Poor lamb, poor lamb!” he murmured, as a mother might have done, and drew her towards him, stroking that gleaming auburn head. “We’ll speed us back to England with every stitch of canvas spread. Take heart then, and. …”
But she broke in impetuously, drawing away from him as she spoke, and his heart sank with foreboding of the thing she was about to inquire.
“I overheard a sailor just now saying to another that it is your intent to hang Sir Oliver Tressilian out of hand—this morning.”
He misunderstood her utterly. “Be comforted,” he said. “My justice shall be swift; my vengeance sure. The yardarm is charged already with the rope on which he shall leap to his eternal punishment.”
She caught her breath, and set a hand upon her bosom as if to repress its sudden tumult.
“And upon what grounds,” she asked him with an air of challenge, squarely facing him, “do you intend to do this thing?”
“Upon what grounds?” he faltered. He stared and frowned, bewildered by her question and its tone. “Upon what grounds?” he repeated, foolishly almost in the intensity of his amazement. Then he considered her more closely, and the wildness of her eyes bore to him slowly an explanation of words that at first had seemed beyond explaining.
“I see!” he said in a voice of infinite pity; for the conviction to which he had leapt was that her poor wits were all astray after the horrors through which she had lately travelled. “You must rest,” he said gently, “and give no thought to such matters as these. Leave them to me, and be very sure that I shall avenge you as is due.”
“Sir John, you mistake me, I think. I do not desire that you avenge me. I have asked you upon what grounds you intend to do this thing, and you have not answered me.”
In increasing amazement he continued to stare. He had been wrong, then. She was quite sane and mistress of her wits. And yet instead of the fond inquiries concerning Lionel which he had been dreading came this amazing questioning of his grounds to hang his prisoner.
“Need I state to you—of all living folk—the offences which that dastard has committed?” he asked, expressing thus the very question that he was setting himself.
“You need to tell me,” she answered, “by what right you constitute yourself his judge and executioner; by what right you send him to his death in this peremptory fashion, without trial.” Her manner was as stern as if she were invested with all the authority of a judge.
“But you,” he faltered in his ever-growing bewilderment, “you, Rosamund, against whom he has offended so grievously, surely you should be the last to ask me such a question! Why, it is my intention to proceed with him as is the manner of the sea with all knaves taken as Oliver Tressilian was taken. If your mood be merciful towards him—which as God lives, I can scarce conceive—consider that this is the greatest mercy he can look for.”
“You speak of mercy and vengeance in a breath, Sir John.” She was growing calm, her agitation was quieting and a grim sternness was replacing it.
He made a gesture of impatience. “What good purpose could it serve to take him to England?” he demanded. “There he must stand his trial, and the issue is foregone. It were unnecessarily to torture him.”
“The issue may be none so foregone as you suppose,” she replied. “And that trial is his right.”
Sir John took a turn in the cabin, his wits all confused.
It was preposterous that he should stand and argue upon such a matter with Rosamund of all people, and yet she was compelling him to it against his every inclination, against common sense itself.
“If he so urges it, we’ll not deny him,” he said at last, deeming it best to humour her. “We’ll take him back to England if he demands it, and let him stand his trial there. But Oliver Tressilian must realize too well what is in store for him to make any such demand.” He passed before her, and held out his hands in entreaty. “Come, Rosamund, my dear! You are distraught, you. …”
“I am indeed distraught, Sir John,” she answered, and took the hands that he extended. “Oh, have pity!” she cried with a sudden change to utter intercession. “I implore you to have pity!”
“What pity can I show you, child? You have but to name. …”
“ ’Tis not pity for me, but pity for him that I am beseeching of you.”
“For him?” he cried, frowning again.
“For Oliver Tressilian.”
He dropped her hands and stood away. “God’s light!” he swore. “You sue for pity for Oliver Tressilian, for that renegade, that incarnate devil? Oh, you are mad!” he stormed. “Mad!” and he flung away from her, whirling his arms.
“I love him,” she said simply.
That answer smote him instantly still. Under the shock of it he just stood and stared at her again, his jaw fallen.
“You love him!” he said at last below his breath. “You love him! You love a man who is a pirate, a renegade, the abductor of yourself and of Lionel, the man who murdered your brother!”
“He did not.” She was fierce in her denial of it. “I have learnt the truth of that matter.”
“From his lips, I suppose?” said Sir John, and he was unable to repress a sneer. “And you believed him?”
“Had I not believed him I should not have married him.”
“Married him?” Sudden horror came now to temper his bewilderment. Was there to be no end to these astounding revelations? Had they reached the climax yet, he wondered, or was there still more to come? “You married that infamous villain?” he asked, and his voice was expressionless.
“I
