r I should have lied yet
other times. Your honor was at stake, dear lady."

"My honor!"--this in bitterest irony. "What is a woman's honor, sir,
when you or any man has patched and sewed and sought to make it whole
again? I will not say the word you'd have me say!"

"But you must say it, Margery. 'Tis but the merest form; you forget that
you will be a wife only in name. I shall not live to make you rue it."

"You make me rue it now, beforehand. _Mon Dieu!_ is a woman but a thing,
to stand before the priest and plight her troth for 'merest form'?
You'll make me hate you while I live--and after!"

"You'd hate me worse, Margery dear, if I should leave you drowning in
this ditch. And I can bear your hatred for some few hours, knowing that
if I sinned and robbed you, I did make restitution as I could."

She heard me through with eyelids down and some fierce storm of passion
shaking her. And when she answered her voice was low and soft; yet it
cut me like a knife.

"You drive me to it--listen, sir, _you drive me to it_! And I have said
that I shall hate you for it. Come; 'tis but a mockery, as you say; and
they are waiting."

I sought to take her hand and lead her forth, but this she would not
suffer. She walked beside me, proud and cold and scornful; stood beside
me while I sat and read the parchment over. It was no marriage
settlement; it was a will, drawn out in legal form. And in it I
bequeathed to Margery Ireton as her true jointure, not any claim of
mine to Appleby Hundred, _but the estate itself_.

I read it through as I have said, and, looking across to these two
plotters, the miser-master and his henchman, smiled as I had never
thought to smile again.

"So," said I; "the truth is out at last. I wondered if the confiscation
act had left you wholly scatheless, Mr. Stair. Well, I am content. I
shall die the easier for knowing that I have lain a guest in my own
house. Give me the pen."

'Twas given quickly, and I signed the will, with Tybee and the lawyer
for the witnesses; Margery standing by the while and looking on; though
not, I made sure, with any realizing of the business matter.

When all was done the priest found his book, and we stood before him;
the woman who had sworn to hate, and the man who, loving her to full
forgetfulness of death itself, must yet be cold and formal, masking his
love for her dear sake, and for the sake of loyalty to his friend. And
here again 'twas Tybee and the lawyer who wer