During this tilt between his factor and me, Mr. Gilbert Stair had stood apart, watchful but trembling.  When we were alone I said: 

“Now, Mr. Stair, I shall trouble you to billet me somewhere in your house, as a member of my Lord’s family.  Lead on, if you please, and I’ll follow.”

He went before me without a word, out of the little den and up the broad stair, doddering like a man grown ten years older in a breath, and catching at the balustrade to steady himself as we ascended.  The room he gave me was at an angle in one of the crookings of the corridor, and pointing me to the door he went pottering away, still without a word or a look behind him.

The door was on the latch, but it gave reluctantly, letting me in suddenly when I set my shoulder to it.  There was a quick little cry, half of anger, half of affright, from within.  I drew back hastily, with a muttered curse upon the old man’s spite, and in the act my spur caught the door and slammed it shut behind me.

For reasons known only to Omniscience and to himself, Gilbert Stair had shown me to my lady’s chamber; she was standing, with her bodice off, before the oval mirror on the high dressing case.

XXXVI

HOW I RODE POST ON THE KING’S BUSINESS

If a look might be a leven-stroke to do a man to death, I warrant you my lady’s flashing eyes would have crisped me to a cinder where I stood fumbling with one hand behind me for the latch of the slammed door.  Scorn, indignation, outraged maiden modesty, all these thrust at me like air-drawn daggers; and it needed not her, “Fie, for shame, Captain Ireton!—­and you would call yourself a gentleman!” to set me afire with prinklings of abashment.

What could I say or do?  The accursed door-latch would not find itself to let me fly; and as for excusings, I could not tell her that her own father had thrust me thus upon her.  Yet, had she let me be, I hope I should have had the wit to find the door fastening and the grace to run away; in truth, I had the latch in hand when she lashed out at me again, and my tingling shame began to give place to that master-devil of passion which is never more than half whipped into subjection in the best of us.

“How are you better than the man you warned me of?” she cried.  And then, in a tempest of grief:  “Oh! you would not leave me the respect I bore you; you must even rob me of that to fling it down and trample it under foot!”

Figure to yourselves, my dears, that I was wholly blameless in this unhappy breaking and entering, and so, mayhap, you may find excuse for me.  For now, though I could have gone, I would not.  Her glorious beauty, heightened beyond compare by the passionate outburst, held me spellbound.  And at my ear the master-devil whispered:  She is your wedded wife; yours for better or worse, till death part you.  Who has a better right to look upon her thus?