She would have shrieked aloud but that she clutched her throat in
time.
"Tell him!" she cried, "tell him, and see if he will hear you. Your
word against mine!"
"Think you I do not know that full well," he answered, and he
brought forth a little package folded in silk. "Why have I done
naught but threaten till this time? If I went to him without proof,
he would run me through with his sword as I were a mad dog. But is
there another woman in England from whose head her lover could
ravish a lock as long and black as this?"
He unfolded the silk, and let other silk unfold itself, a great and
thick ring of raven hair which uncoiled its serpent length, and
though he held it high, was long enough after surging from his hand
to lie upon the floor.
"Merciful God!" she cried, and shuddering, hid her face.
"'Twas a bet, I own," he said; "I heard too much of the mad beauty
and her disdain of men not to be fired by a desire to prove to her
and others, that she was but a woman after all, and so was to be
won. I took an oath that I would come back some day with a trophy--
and this I cut when you knew not that I did it."
She clutched her throat again to keep from shrieking in her--
impotent horror.
"Devil, craven, and loathsome--and he knows not what he is!" she
gasped. "He is a mad thing who knows not that all his thoughts are
of hell."
'Twas, in sooth, a strange and monstrous thing to see him so
unwavering and bold, flinching before no ignominy, shrinking not to
speak openly the thing before the mere accusation of which other
men's blood would have boiled.
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