"An innocent of all good," she cried--"of all things good on earth--of all that I know now, having seen manhood and honour." "His Grace of Osmonde has not been told this," he said; "and I should make it all plain to him." "What do you ask, devil?" she broke forth. "What is't you ask?" "That you shall not be the Duchess of Osmonde," he said, drawing near to her; "that you shall be the wife of Sir John Oxon, as you once called yourself for a brief space, though no priest had mumbled over us--" "Who was't divorced us?" she said, gasping; "for I was an honest thing, though I knew no other virtue. Who was't divorced us?" "I confess," he answered, bowing, "that 'twas I--for the time being. I was young, and perhaps fickle--" "And you left me," she cried, "and I found that you had come but for a bet--and since I so bore myself that you could not boast, and since I was not a rich woman whose fortune would be of use to you, you followed another and left me--me!" "As his Grace of Osmonde will when I tell him my story," he answered. "He is not one to brook that such things can be told of the mother of his heirs." 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. "When I bore it away with me," he said, "I lived wildly for a space, and in those days put it in a place of safety, and when I was sober again I had forgot where. Yesterday, by a strange chance, I came upon it. Think you it can be mistaken for any other woman's hair?"