"Instead ?" "There can be no instead, Sir Crispin.

You will not mar so good an action now.

You will give me my letter, will you not ?" Callous though he was, Crispin winced.

The breeding of earlier days--so sadly warped, alas!--cried out within him against the lie that he was acting by pretending to suspect treason in that woman's pothooks.
Instincts of gentility and generosity long dead took life again, resuscitated by that call of conscience.

He was conquered.
"There, take your letter, boy, and plague me no more," he growled, as he held it out to Kenneth.