Astounded and dumb, we stood there as though rooted to the floor.
She looked at Butler and laughed; picked up a pistol, loaded it with incredible deftness, laid it on the table, and began loading the other.
"Elsin! Elsin!" cried Lady Coleville, catching her by the waist, "what is this wild freak of yours? Have you all gone mad to-night?"
"You shake my hand and spill the powder," said the Hon. Miss Grey, smiling.
"Elsin," murmured Walter Butler, "has this fellow Renault poisoned you against me?"
"Why, no, sir. You are married to a wife and dare to court me! There lies the poison, Mr. Butler!"
"Hush, Elsin!" murmured Lady Coleville. "It was a mistake, dear. Mr. Butler is not married to the--the lady--to anybody. He swears it!"
"Not wedded?" She stared, then turned scarlet to her hair. And Walter Butler, I think, mistook the cause and meaning of that crimson shame, for he smiled, and drawing a paper from his coat, spread it to Sir Peter's eyes.
"I spoke of the gallows, Sir Peter, and you felt yourself once more affronted. Yet, if you will glance at this----"
"What is it?" asked Sir Peter, looking him in the eye.
"Treason, Sir Peter--a letter--part of one--to the rebel Washington, written by a spy!"
"A lie! I wrote it!" said the Hon. Miss Grey.
Walter Butler turned to her, amazed, doubting his ears.
"A jest," she continued carelessly, "to amuse Mr. Renault."
"Amuse him! It is in his own hand!" stammered Butler.
"Apparently. But I wrote it, imitating his hand to plague him. It is indifferently done," she added, with a shrug. "I hid it in the cupboard he uses for his love-letters. How came it in your fingers, Mr. Butler?"
In blank astonishment he stood there, the letter half extended, his eyes almost starting from his face. Slowly she moved forward, confronting him, insolent eyes meeting his; and, ere he could guess what she purposed, she had snatched the blotted fragment from him and crushed it in her hand, always eying him until he crimsoned in the focus of her white contempt.
"Go!" she said. Her low voice was passionless.
He turned his burning eyes from her to Lady Coleville, to Sir Peter, then bent his gaze on me. What he divined in my face I know not, but the flame leaped in his eyes, and that ghastly smile stretched the muscles of his visage.
"My zeal, it seems, has placed me at a sorry disadvantage," he said. "Error piled on error growing from a most unhappy misconstruction of my purposes has changed faith to suspicion, amity to coldness. I know not what to say to clear myself--" He turned his melancholy face to Elsin; all anger had faded from it, and only deepest sadness shadowed the pale brow. "I ventured to believe, in days gone by, that my devotion was not utterly displeasing--that perhaps the excesses of a stormy and impetuous youth might be condoned in the humble devotion of an honest passion----"