defend them better."

"Aye, you talk like a man of blood. You come hectoring it here in the
very house of the dead--in the very house upon which you have cast this
blight of sorrow and murder...."

"Have done, I say, or murder there will be!"

His voice was a roar, his mien terrific. And bold man though Sir John
was, he recoiled. Instantly Sir Oliver had conquered himself again. He
swung to Rosamund. "Ah, forgive me!" he pleaded. "I am mad--stark mad
with anguish at the thing imputed. I have not loved your brother, it is
true. But as I swore to you, so have I done. I have taken blows from
him, and smiled; but yesterday in a public place he affronted me, lashed
me across the face with his riding-whip, as I still bear the mark. The
man who says I were not justified in having killed him for it is a liar
and a hypocrite. Yet the thought of you, Rosamund, the thought that he
was your brother sufficed to quench the rage in which he left me. And
now that by some grim mischance he has met his death, my recompense for
all my patience, for all my thought for you is that I am charged with
slaying him, and that you believe this charge."

"She has no choice," rasped Killigrew.

"Sir John," he cried, "I pray you do not meddle with her choice. That
you believe it, marks you for a fool, and a fool's counsel is a rotten
staff to lean upon at any time. Why God o' mercy! assume that I desired
to take satisfaction for the affront he had put upon me; do you know so
little of men, and of me of all men, that you suppose I should go about
my vengeance in this hole-and-corner fashion to set a hangman's noose