"Hold, hold! I love thee not! no, no, I love thee not. You presume too much, sir," she added, starting from her att.i.tude, and with difficulty a.s.suming a haughty bearing. "A maiden may once love, and, finding she has loved unworthily, hate!"

"Dearest Kate," he said, in a tone that reminded her of the days when they were lovers, gently taking her hand.

"Nay, stand back, sir!" she cried, troubled and with difficulty governing the tones of her voice, which returning love fain would have fashioned in its own sweet way.

"Nay, dearest Kate, you love me still! Wherefore this shrinking form and averted eye--this wild look of alarm--this struggle to reprove when your heart gushes with returning love? Why do you gaze on me with looks of horror! At one moment terror is depicted on your face, at another tenderness takes its place. It could not be thus if you scorned me!"

"Robert, I cannot listen to you--'tis dangerous--fatal. If--if I did love you still, thy crimes--"

"Ha! do you know me!"

"As 'the Kyd.'"

"Who told thee this?" he asked, fiercely.

"Elpsy."

"When?"

"Yesterday!"

"The foul fiend!" he cried, pacing the floor. He then muttered, "So--this plan is defeated. I can no longer rewoo her as Lester! Ten minutes since, this false witch told me that none save herself knew that the b.a.s.t.a.r.d Lester and Kyd were one! I would have made her believe I had returned from five years of honourable exile, to which her anger had banished me, and penitent, wooed her as Lester, as I have promised the sorceress--for I can do now what then I could not do: five years of crime makes a wonderful difference in a man's feelings! Yet I will deny all. She should believe me before this witch."

Such were the thoughts that run rapidly through his mind as he walked the room. Turning round to her, he said, in the tone of voice that innocence would a.s.sume,

"Alas, dearest Kate! has this baleful sorceress, with envenomed breath, instilled her poison in a flower so fair. Alas, and were I 'the Kyd,'

would you, with the taproom gossips of the babbling town, believe me such as Rumour with her hundred tongues would make me? Shall I to _her_ refer this altered air--this cold look--this hand that's neither given nor withdrawn? Dost remember when first we parted after our plighted vows beneath the linden by the southern tower of Castle Cor ('twas the third day before thy birthday, I remember it well); thy heart against mine beat wildly--thy head lay upon my breast--my arm encircled thy waist--my lips were pressed to thine--and this 'kerchief, bearing thy initials wrought by thine own fingers, and which I have kept sacred as the pious monk a relic of the cross, was saturate with tears--_thy_ tears, Kate. And thus, though five long years have separated us, do we meet now!"

"'Fore Heaven, sir! hast thou not given cause?" she exclaimed, recovering herself after a brief but terrible struggle with her feelings, for she was fast melting at his words. "Dost remember how thou didst leave me, and to what end? Hast forgotten thy crimes? I am mad to talk with thee. Thou art no longer Lester. In thee alone I see the freebooter, the bucanier, the terrible Kyd! Shame that a n.o.ble, for a light word spoken by a spirited maiden in anger, should thus have cast himself away!"

"I had other cause--thou dost yet believe me to be Lester--but--"

"I will hear no palliation--thou hast thrown thyself away--when, if thou hadst really loved me, thou wouldst have come back and sought to heal the breach."

"I would have done it--but--"

"Thou didst not. Therefore are we no longer aught to each other!"

"Thy words tell me what I have scarce dared to hope--that thou wouldst have received and pardoned me! But there was an impa.s.sable barrier--"

"Which was thy pride. Fatal, fatal has it been to thee."

"Nay, but a dark stain--"

"Enough, Robert of Lester! I will hear no more in extenuation or plea.

Let this interview cease."

She turned from him as she spoke, though it evidently cost her an effort to do so, and made a step towards the door communicating with the main body of the mansion.

"Lady! Kate--dear Kate," he cried, pa.s.sionately, approaching her and kneeling before her, "you have said you would have received me had I then returned. If thy love was true love, five years should not kill it, but increase it rather. Behold me returned; forget the long lapse of time; see me only at thy feet to atone the deep offence given on thy birthday, which has so long separated us; receive me as if but a day, and not years, had intervened; take me once more to the throne of thy affections; let me again be the Lester of thy early years--the Lester whom thou hast loved--_thy_ Lester--thy--"

"Nay, Robert," she cried, with softness, yet turning her head away as she spoke, as if fearing to trust herself to meet his glance; "nay, it may not be. I pity you; but love!--love?--no, no, it lives no longer.

Then art thou not guilty?" she cried, with sudden energy, recoiling from him. "Thou didst make me for the moment forget Kyd in Lester. Go, thou art not the Lester I have known. I no longer love thee, Robert; and if I did, crime on thy part has placed between us a wall high as heaven!"

"I am not so guilty as you believe, lady; but, if I have sinned against thee, thus here at thy feet I do atone my deep offence."

"Rise, sir. I accuse you not; with Heaven lies the knowledge of your guilt. But, if conscience goad thee not to it, why thus a suppliant?"

"Conscience useth neither spur nor exhortation. If I am proved innocent, yet is the homage of my knee still due to thee as the divinity that my soul for years has worshipped."

"Enough, sir! I tremble to hear thee link my name with such gross impiety. Detain me no longer."

"Dear Lady Kate!" he pleaded, entreatingly.

"Release my hand! and remember," she added, with a suddenness characteristic of this _capricieuse creation_, "when you fashion your speech, that you address Lady Catharine of Bellamont!"

She drew back haughtily as she spoke, and the guilty lover bent his head low before the reproof, while resentment and grief were mingled in the expression of his countenance.

"Lady," he said, without looking up, and speaking in a voice apparently modulated by injured feelings, "do you believe the tales of crime men charge me with?"

"How else," she replied, pausing and turning back, losing, in her just resentment, the lover in the pirate, and speaking in tones of virtuous dignity, "How else? 'Tis rife on every tongue. Thy deeds are the undying theme of fireside wonder and village gossip. Nay, mothers use the dreaded name of Kyd to scare rude children to obedience!"

"By the cross!" he cried, starting up and speaking with fierce vehemence, "'tis all a foul invention; an idle tale and lying calumny; the escaped bile of some long-festering sore, nourished and fattened in the breast of scandal. Nay, dear Kate," he continued, changing his manner and voice, and speaking as if he made light of it all, "'tis not worth a pa.s.sing thought! 'Tis an old-wives' tale only; and for such inventions thou hast too much good sense to crush the hopes of years; thou hast," he added, tenderly, "too deep remembrance of our former love to tear a heart that, like the rootless mistletoe which borrows life from that it clings to, lives only by its hold on thine!"

"Robert," she said, moved by the solemn and impa.s.sioned tones of his voice, his pleading look, his face upturned to hers, all eloquent with love and bringing him, as in happier days, before her memory, "Robert, I once loved you--how truly, Heaven and my own heart were witnesses. Thou wert virtuous then, and helmeted with truth, and thy heart was girt about with honour, like plate of proof. Thy look was n.o.ble, and thy port such as became the n.o.bleness within. I was proud of thee. Absent, I treasured thee in my heart of hearts, and lived only--was happy only, in thy presence! When Rumour came trumpeting your misdeeds, _I_ was the _last_ to believe them true."

"Kate--dearest Kate--"

"Nay, speak not. Your tongue and eyes are not yet drilled to play their parts together."

"Kate--I entreat--"

"True love for a n.o.ble maiden should have been to thee a shield and buckler, Robert, and kept thee from this sad fall."

"Lady, you do me wrong. My hand, but not my heart, has erred--"

"I have not yet done. From one source, that mingles not with the noisy torrent Rumour has let loose throughout the world, I've gathered most certain proof that you are guilty both in heart and hand. Ay, men do not, for very fear, tell the half of what thou hast done."

"This source--the witch?"

"No. Long had I heard of Kyd the outlaw; long had crime and guilt, in shapes most dreadful and appalling, come to my shrinking ears coupled with his name. Night and day, as we crossed the sea, was double watch set, lest he should come upon us unawares. Everywhere did I hear of him and his deeds of blood, till I did believe him to be a demon human only in shape, let on earth for its punishment. 'Twas from one who had been thy prisoner I heard the sanguinary tale. 'Twas told me ere I knew thee other than the world knew thee--for 'twas only yesterday Elpsy told me, what before had crossed my mind as the mere shadow of a suspicion, banished as soon as it came, that thou wert Lester, and that revenge against me had driven thee to piracy. This I believe not; Heaven keep me from answering for thy guilt--rather attribute it to thy own evil pa.s.sions, and, I fear, an innate love for rapine; for how else wouldst thou have torn thy n.o.ble mother's heart (I speak not of hers to whom thy troth was plighted), and foregone thy rank and t.i.tle among men?"

"If thou didst know all, lady, thou wouldst not judge me thus--"

"Thou canst say nothing I will believe. He who told me is, as once thou wert, the soul of truth and honour!"

"Who is this Daniel come to judgment?" asked the bucanier, with irony.