"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