Ravenshaw glared at him with the tortured look of a man sorely tempted.
"Moreover," added Jerningham, "what profit can you have in any kind of virtue, when your reputation is so villainous?"
"Hang my reputation! I'll not be taken for a love-messenger. I'll help no man to any woman."
"You are an ass, then. For aught you know, my love may be honest enough."
"If it were, you would go about it otherwise."
"You know not the world, to say so. Does honest love always work openly? Hath not every case its peculiar circumstances? Because you fear, without known grounds, that you may be a means of harm to a wench, will you go hungry to-morrow? You are fed now, but will you be fed then? Troth, I ne'er knew a craving stomach to have nice scruples."
"Oh, faith, I know that want is an evil counsellor."
"Evil or not, it speaks so loud as to silence all others. Is it not so? Come, captain, be not a fool. If I mean no harm to the girl, 'tis no harm in your bringing us together."
"Can I do her harm against her will? She shall name the place and time of meeting. Is it for grown men to be qualmish merely because a petticoat is concerned?"
"Petticoats to the devil! I owe no kindness to women, I say. 'Twas a woman's wiles upon my father robbed me of my patrimony. 'Twas a woman's treason to my love poisoned my heart, deprived me of my friend, changed the course of my fortunes, and made me what I am. Calamities fall upon the whole she-tribe, say I!"
"Why, then, if at the worst chance I should be the cause of harm to this one, 'twould be so much amends to you on the part of the sex."
A sudden baleful light gleamed in Ravenshaw's eyes.
"By God, that were some revenge!" he muttered. "Who is the woman?"
"A goldsmith's daughter--some vain minx, no doubt; deserving no better fate, and desiring no better. As for the goldsmith--they are cheaters all, these citizens that keep shops; overchargers, falsifiers of accounts; they rob by ways that are most despicable because least dangerous. And they call _me_ knave! And their women, that flaunt in silks and jewels bought with their cheatings--'twas such a woman cozened me! 'Twas such that made a rogue of me; if I were e'en to pay back my roguery upon such!--I'll do it! By my faith, I'll do it! I'll be your knave in this, your rascal; I take it, a knave is better than a starveling, a rascal is choicer company than a famished man. And 'tis time I settled scores with the race of wenches! Let's hear the full business."