"Do you say that...that Lionel...?" she was beginning in a
voice choked by indignation.
And then Lionel spoke at last, straightening himself into a stiffly
upright attitude.
"He lies!" he cried. "He lies, Rosamund! Do not heed him."
"I do not," she answered, turning away.
A wave of colour suffused the swarthy face of Sakr-el-Bahr. A moment
his eyes followed her as she moved away a step or two, then they turned
their blazing light of anger upon Lionel. He strode silently across to
him, his mien so menacing that Lionel shrank back in fresh terror.
Sakr-el-Bahr caught his brother's wrist in a grip that was as that of a
steel manacle. "We'll have the truth this night if we have to tear it
from you with red-hot pincers," he said between his teeth.
He dragged him forward to the middle of the terrace and held him there
before Rosamund, forcing him down upon his knees into a cowering
attitude by the violence of that grip upon his wrist.
"Do you know aught of the ingenuity of Moorish torture?" he asked him.
"You may have heard of the rack and the wheel and the thumbscrew at
home. They are instruments of voluptuous delight compared with the
contrivances of Barbary to loosen stubborn tongues."
White and tense, her hands clenched, Rosamund seemed to stiffen before
him.
"You coward! You cur! You craven renegade dog!" she branded him.
Oliver released his brother's wrist and beat his hands together.
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