Through Killigrew he would reach her, he had said; and he would yet see her on her knees craving his pardon for the wrong she had done him, for the cruelty she had shown him.
Lionel knew that Killigrew was absent from home just then; but he was expected to return by Easter, and to Easter there was but a week.
Therefore he had little time in which to act, little time in which to execute the project that had come into his mind.

He cursed himself for conceiving it, but held to it with all the strength of a weak nature.
Yet when he came to sit face to face with Jasper Leigh in that little inn-parlour with the scrubbed table of plain deal between them, he lacked the courage to set his proposal forth.

They drank sherry sack stiffly laced with brandy by Lionel's suggestion, instead of the more customary mulled ale.

Yet not until he had consumed the best part of a pint of it did Lionel feel himself heartened to broaching his loathsome business.

Through his head hummed the words his brother had said some time ago when first the name of Jasper Leigh had passed between them--"a desperate adventurer ripe for anything.