“Do I, indeed, mon ami?” she flashed out.  “Let me tell you, sir, had she ever a blush of saving pride, Margery Stair—­or Margery Ireton, if you like that better—­would kill you with her own hand rather than have it said her husband died upon a gallows!”

A sudden light broke in upon me and I went blind in the horror of it.

“God in Heaven!” I gasped; “’twas you, then?  I do believe you poisoned me in that dish of tea you sent me last night!”

She laughed, a bitter little laugh that I hated to think on afterward.

“You have a most chivalrous soul, Captain Ireton.  I do not wonder you are so fierce to shake it free of the poor body of clay.”

“But you do not deny it!” I cried.

“Of what use would it be?  I have said that I would not have you die shamefully on the gallows; so I may as well confess to the poppy-juice in the tea.  Tell me, Monsieur John; was it nasty bitter?”

“Good Lord!” I groaned; “are you a woman, or a fiend?”

“Either, or both, as you like to hold me, sir.  But come what might, I said you should not die a felon’s death.  And you have not, as yet.”

“Better a thousand times the rope and tree than that I should rot by inches here with you to sit by and gird at me.  Ah, my lady, you are having your revenge of me.”

“Merci, encore. Shall I go away and leave you?”

“No, not that.”  A cold sweat broke out upon me in a sudden childish horror of the solitude and the darkness and the fetters.  And then I added:  “But ’twould be angel kindness if you would leave off torturing me.  I am but a man, dear lady, and a sick man at that.”

All in a flash her mood changed and she bent to lay a cool palm on my throbbing temples.

“Poor Monsieur John!” she said softly; “I meant not to make you suffer more, but rather less.”  Then she found water and a napkin to wring out and bind upon my aching head.

At the touch and the word of womanly sympathy I forgot all, and the love-madness came again to blot out the very present memory of how she had brought me to this.

“Ah, that is better—­better,” I sighed, when the pounding hammers in my temples gave me some surcease of the agony.

“Then you forgive me?” she asked, whether jestingly or in earnest I could not tell.

“There is none so much to forgive,” I replied.  “One hopeless day last summer I put my life in pledge to you; and you—­in common justice you have the right to do what you will with it.”

“Ah; now you talk more like my old-time Monsieur John with the healing sword-thrust.  But that day you speak of was not more hopeless for you than for me.”

“I know it,” said I, thinking only of how the loveless marriage must grind upon her.  “But it must needs be hopeless for both till death steps in to break the bond.”

Again she laughed, that same bitter little laugh.