"But let me be quick," I continued. "Is it known that you are at Applegarth? Have you ridden far abroad?" And in my anxiety I went over to the window and gazed down the road. Neither did she answer my questions, but, standing by the fireplace, in an even, deliberate voice she began to read me a lecture upon my manners.
"Miss Curwen!" I cried; "do you understand? Every moment you stay here, every word you speak, imperils your liberty."
She waited patiently until I had done, and continued her lecture at the point where I had interrupted her, as though I had not so much as spoken at all.
"This is the purest wilfulness!" I interrupted again, being indeed at my wits' end to know how I should stop her. I think that I showed too much anxiety, with my bobbings at the window, and exclamations, and that, seeing my alarm, she prolonged her speech out of sheer perversity to punish me the more. At last, however, she came to an end, and we set ourselves to the breakfast in silence. However, I was too hot with indignation to keep that silence wisely.
"The most ill-timed talk that ever I heard," I muttered.
She laid her knife and fork on the instant, and quietly recommenced. I rose from the table in a rage, and by a lucky chance hit upon the one argument that would close her lips.
"You forget," said I, "that your father's safety depends on your escape. If you and I are taken here, how shall he get free?" And in a very few minutes after that I took up the bundle Mary Tyson had made ready, and we crossed the threshold of Applegarth and made our way up Gillerthwaite.
It was still early in the morning, but I pushed on with perhaps greater urgency than suited my companion, since I was anxious that we should lie that night in Eskdale. Dorothy, indeed, walked more slowly than was usual with her, and there seemed to me to be an uncertainty in her gait, at which I was the more surprised, since the wind blew from the east, and we, who were moving eastwards, were completely sheltered from it by the cliffs of Great Gable, towering at the head of the valley. The steeper the ascent became, the greater grew the uncertainty of movement, so that I began to feel anxious lest some sickness should have laid hold upon her. I thought it best, however, to say nothing of my suspicion, but contented myself with glancing at her stealthily now and again. There was no hint of sickness discoverable upon her face, only she pursed her lips something sullenly, as though she was persisting in what she knew to be wrong; and once I thought that her eyes caught one of my troubled glances, and she coloured like one ashamed. At last, just as we had topped the summit of the pass, and were beginning to descend the broad, grassy cliffs between that mountain and the Pillar, she spoke, and it was the first time she had opened her lips since we had left Applegarth.
"It is an apology you need, I suppose," said she, with a singular aggressiveness, and my anxiety increased. For since I could not see that I had given her any occasion to take that tone, I was inclined to set it down to some bodily suffering.
"An apology?" I asked, with an effort at a careless laugh. "And what makes you fancy I need that?"