? 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.

"'Twas a bet, I own," he said; "I heard too much of the mad beauty and
her disdain of men not to be fired by a desire to prove to her and
others, that she was but a woman after all, and so was to be won. I took
an oath that I would come back some day with a trophy--and this I cut
when you knew not that I did it."

She clutched her throat again to keep from shrieking in her--impotent
horror.

"Devil, craven, and loathsome--and he knows not what he is!" she gasped.
"He is a mad thing who knows not that all his thoughts are of hell."

'Twas, in sooth, a strange and monstrous thing to see him so unwavering
and bold, flinching before no ignominy, shrinking not to speak openly the
thing before the mere accusation of which other men's blood would have
boiled.

"When I bore it away with me," he said, "I lived wildly for a space, and
in those days put it in a place of safety, and when I was sober again I
had forgot where. Yesterday, by a strange chance, I came upon it. Think
you it can be mistaken for any other woman's hair?"

At this she held up her hand.

"Wait," she said. "You will go to Osmonde, you will tell him this, you
will--"

"I will tell him all the story of the rose garden and of the sun-dial,
and the beauty who had wit enough to scorn a man in public that she might
more safely hold tryst with him alone. She had great wit and cunning for
a beauty of sixteen. 'Twould be well for her lord to have keen eyes when
she is twenty."

He should have seen the warning in her eyes, for there was warning enough
in their flaming depths.

"All that you can say I know," she said--"all that you can say! And I
love him. There is no other man on earth. Were he a beggar, I would
tramp the highroad by his side and go hungered with him. He is my lord,
and I his mate--his mate!"

"That you will not be," he answered, made devilish by her words. "He is
a high and noble gentleman, and wants no man's cast-off plaything for his
wife."