第47章

"To place my sword at his service Were I not encompassed by this ruin, I should not have stirred a foot in that direction - so rash, so foredoomed to failure is this invasion. As it is," - he shrugged and laughed - "it is the only hope - all forlorn though it may be - for me."The trammels she had imposed upon her soul fell away at that like bonds of cobweb. She laid her hand upon his wrists, tears stood in her eyes;her lips quivered.

"Anthony, forgive me," she besought him. He trembled under her touch, under the caress of her voice, and at the sound of his name for the first time upon her lips.

"What have I to forgive?" he asked.

"The thing that I did in the niatter of that letter.""You poor child," said he, smiling gently upon her, "you did it in self-defence.""Yet say that you forgive me - say it before you go!" she begged him.

He considered her gravely a moment. "To what end," he asked, "do you imagine that I have talked so much? To the end that I might show you that however I may have wronged you I have at the last made some amends;and that for the sake of this, the truest proof of penitence, I may have your forgiveness ere I go."She was weeping softly. "It was an ill day on which we met," she sighed.

"For you - aye."

"Nay - for you.

"We'll say for both of us, then," he compromised. "See, Ruth, your cousin grows weary, and I have a couple of comrades who are no doubt impatient to be gone. It may not be good for us to tarry in these parts. Some amends I have made; but there is one crowning wrong which I have done you for which there is but one amend to make." He paused.

He steadied himself before continuing. In his attempt to render his voice cold and commonplace he went near to achieving harshness. "It may be that this crackbrained rebellion of which the torch is already alight will, if it does no other good in England, at least make a widow of you. When that has come to pass, when I have thus repaired the wrong I did you, I hope you'll bear me as kindly as may be in your thought.

Good-bye, my Ruth! I would you might have loved me. I sought to force it." He smiled ever so wanly. "Perhaps that was my mistake. It is an ill thing to eat one's hay while it is grass." He raised to his lips the little gloved hand that still rested on his wrist. "God keep you, Ruth!" he murmured.

She sought to answer him, but something choked her; a sob was all she achieved. Had he caught her to him in that moment there is little doubt but that she had yielded. Perhaps he knew it; and knowing it kept the tighter rein upon desire. She was as metal molten in the crucible, to be moulded by his craftsman's hands into any pattern that he chose. But the crucible was the crucible of pity, not of love; that, too, he knew, and, knowing it, forbore.

He dropped her hand, doffed his hat, and, wheeling his horse about, touched it with the spur and rode back towards the thicket where his friends awaited him. As he left her, she too wheeled about, as if to follow him. She strove to command her voice that she might recall him;but at that same moment Trenchard, hearing his returning hoofs, thrust out into the road with Vallancey following at his heels. The old player's harsh voice reached her where she stood, and it was querulous with impatience.

"What a plague do you mean, dallying here at such a time, Anthony?" he cried, to which Vallancey added: "In God's name, let us push on.

At that she checked her impulse - it may even be that she mistrusted it.

She paused, lingering undecided for an instant; then, turning her horse once more, she ambled up the slope to rejoin Diana.