Thou wilt never mock me more!"
"In part!" groaned Mompesson. "Is not thy vengeance fully satiated? What
more wouldst thou have?"
"What more?" echoed the other, with the laugh of a demon,--"for every
day of anguish thou gavest my brother in his dungeon in the Fleet I
would have a month--a year, I would not have thee perish too soon, and
therefore thou shalt be better cared for than he was. But thou shalt
never escape--never! and at the last I will be by thy side."
It would almost seem as if that moment were come, for, as the words were
uttered, Mompesson fainted from loss of blood and intensity of pain, and
in this state he was placed upon a hurdle tied to a horse's heels, and
conveyed back to the Fleet.
As threatened, he was doomed to long and solitary imprisonment, and the
only person, beside the jailer, admitted to his cell, was his
unrelenting foe. A steel mirror was hung up in his dungeon, so that he
might see to what extent his features had been disfigured.
In this way three years rolled by--years of uninterrupted happiness to
Sir Jocelyn and Lady Mounchensey, as well as to Master Richard Taverner
and his dame; but of increasing gloom to the captive in his solitary
cell in the Fleet. Of late, he had become so fierce and unmanageable
that he had to be chained to the wall. He sprang at his jailer and tried
to strangle him, and gnashed his teeth, and shook his fists in impotent
rage at Osmond Mounchensey.
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