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."