"Well," she replied, in an even voice, "is the belief so strange?"
There was no sarcasm in the question, and hardly any curiosity. It was the mere natural utterance of a natural thought. My eyes, I know, fell from her face to the floor.
"Madam," I replied slowly, "when I set out to-night, I thought that the cup of my humiliation was already full. You prove to me that my thought was wrong. It remained for you very fitly to fill it to the brim;" and again I lifted my eyes to her. "I had no purposes of my own to serve in riding hither. I know the charge against myself to its last letter. It is the charge against your husband brings me here. Neither do I know whither he has been taken. Yet these two things I must know, and I came to you on the chance that you might help me."
I saw her face change as she listened. She leaned forward on her elbows, her chin propped upon her hands, her eyes losing their indifference. A spark of hope kindled in the depths of them, and when I had ended, she remained silent for a little, as though fearing to quench that spark by the utterance of any words. At last she asked, in almost a timid voice:
"But why—why would you know?" And she bent still further forward with parted lips, breathless for the answer.
"Why?" I answered. "Forgive me! I should have told you that before, but, like a fool, I put the questions first. They are foremost in my thoughts, you see, being the means, and as yet unsolved. The end is so clear to me, that I forgot it in looking for the road which leads to it. I believe that Mr. Herbert has been seized, on the ground that he shares my—treason, let us call it, for so our judges will. Of that charge I know him innocent, and maybe can prove him so. And if I can, be sure of this—I will."
"But how can you?" she interrupted.
"If I know the charge, if I know whither he has been taken, the place of his trial, then it may be that I can serve him. But until I know, I am like one striking at random in the dark. Suppose I go to meet the sheriff and give myself up, not knowing these things, I shall be laid by the heels and no good done. They may have taken him to London. He may be in prison for months. Meanwhile I should be tried—and they would not need Mr. Herbert's evidence to secure a verdict against me."
"You would give yourself up?" she asked.
"But I must know the place, I must know the charge. It would avail your husband little without that knowledge. They would keep me in prison cozening me with excuses, however urgently I might plead for him. It is enough that a man should be suspected of favouring King James. To such they dispense convictions; they make no pother about justice."