The knight's words restored to him the courage of which Rosamund's had bereft him.

With a man he could fight; with a man there was no need to mince his words.
"I cannot answer it," he said, but very firmly, in a tone that brushed aside all implications.

"If you say it was so, so it must have been.

Yet when all is said, what does it prove?
Does it set it beyond doubt that it was I who killed him?
Does it justify the woman who loved me to believe me a murderer and something worse ?" He paused, and looked at her again, a world of reproach in his glance.

She had sunk to a chair, and rocked there, her fingers locking and interlocking, her face a mask of pain unutterable.
"Can you suggest what else it proves, sir ?" quoth Sir John, and there was doubt in his voice.
Sir Oliver caught the note of it, and a sob broke from him.
"O God of pity!" he cried out.