"Mr. Clavering," she replied very gently, "you are overwrought, and I do not wonder. Else would you know that it must honour any woman to serve any man who has so served his King."
I dropped my head into my hands. My very soul rose against this praise.
"If I had served my King," I exclaimed in a despairing remorse, "I should have been in France this many a week back."
"France!" repeated Mr. Curwen, suddenly looking up. "You take the delay too much to heart. For it need be nothing more than a delay, and a brief one besides." He spoke with some significance in his tone. "Lord Derwentwater mentioned in his letter that he would discover a means to set you across in France, but perhaps"—and his voice became almost sly—"perhaps we may find a more expeditious way." He checked himself abruptly, like one that has said too much, and shot a timid glance towards his daughter. I noticed that her face grew a trifle grave, but she did not explain or comment on his words, and Mr. Curwen diverted his talk to indifferent topics. I fear me that I must have proved the dullest auditor, for I gave little heed to what he said, my thoughts being occupied in a quite other fashion. For since his daughter sat over against me at the table, since each time that I lifted my eyes, they must needs encounter hers; since each time that she spoke, the mere sound of her voice was as a stern rebuke; I fell from depth to depth of shame and humiliation. I was sheltering there under the same roof with her, to all seeming an honourable refugee, in very truth an impostor, and bound, moreover, to continue in his imposition. The very clothes which I was wearing forced the truth upon me. I had, indeed, but one thought wherewith to comfort me, and though the comfort was of the coldest, I yet clung to it as my only solace. The thought was this: that I had already determined, at whatsoever cost to me, whether of liberty or life, to repair, so far as a man could, the consequence of my misdoing. It was not that I took any credit from the resolve—I was not, thank God, so far fallen as that—but what comforted me was that I had come to the resolve up there on the hillside between Brandreth and Grey Knotts before I had descended into Ennerdale, before I had set foot within Applegarth; before, in a word, I had heard Dorothy Curwen sing or looked into her eyes. I did not explain to myself the comfort which the thought gave me; I was merely sensible of it. "It was before," I said to myself; and over and over again I gladly repeated the thought.
However, a word which Mr. Curwen spoke, finally aroused my attention, for he made mention of the garden of Blackladies. I suppose that I must by some movement have shown my distaste for the subject, and—
"You do not admire it," he said.
"It is very quaint and ingenious, no doubt," I replied, "but the ingenuity seems misplaced there."
Miss Curwen nodded.
"It is like a fine French ribbon on a homespun gown," said she.
I remembered on the instant something which Lord Derwentwater had said to me concerning Dorothy Curwen.