I felt her eyes upon me as I spoke, and turned to find them full of
tearful pleading. "Oh, tell the truth!" she whispered. "Don't you see?
He has the letter!"

I looked, and sure enough he held it in his hand; and then I understood
the flash of irony in the sloe-black eyes of him.

"You lie clumsily, Captain Ireton, though it is a gentlemanly lie and
does you honor. But we have trapped you fairly and you may as well make
a clean breast of it. Your mistress knew very well what you would have
her do, and since she is your mistress, went to do it."

While he was speaking I had a thought white-hot from some forge-fire of
inspiration--a thought to tip an arrow of conviction and set it
quivering in the mark. I would not stop to measure it; to look aside at
her or any other lest one brief glance apart should send the arrow
wavering from its course. So I looked the colonel boldly in the eye and
drew the bow and sped the shaft.

"You think no other than a mistress would have done this, Colonel
Tarleton--that it was done for love? Well, so it was; but with the love
there went a duty."

"A duty, say you? How is that?"

I bowed as best I might, being so tightly bound; then fixed his eye
again.

"You had forgot that honor is not wholly dead, sir. This lady is my
wife."