"Why?" I asked, hot and excited myself now, "why stop? Why should he, this midnight assassin, be spared?"
"'Tis Csaba, I tell you," she said. "'Tis the Prince. If he is slain there can never be," and she lowered her voice more deeply still, "any union betwixt England and Spain."
"Hold your weapon, Giles," I cried, understanding in a moment what she would convey, and, in honest truth, not deeming this contemptible Prince's life worth the cost of a broken union 'twixt an Englishman and a Spanish girl who loved each other. "Hold up. Be still, I say."
And, obedient to my command, perhaps obedient also to those earlier, haughtier commands uttered in the girl's clear tones, Giles did hold, yet muttering while doing so that he would have been through the other's lungs in a moment.
"So, monseigneur," my sweetheart said, addressing the masked Prince, who now rose from off the knee on to which he had been beaten, "you are content to play the part of murderer, are you? And on a serving-man! For shame!"
"He wore his master's cloak," a deep, muffled voice said. "Until that master appeared just now at your side I thought I was fighting with him."
"Therefore you and your confederate," and I glanced at the dead man at our feet, "sought to murder me. Wherefore?"
"Ay, wherefore?" repeated Damaris.
"Because you loved him, and—and I loved you."