"I assure you that I am very sorry——," he began, and then he stopped short. She had made it very difficult for him to say anything so commonplace, and yet so true.
"If you are sorry," she said, in a softer tone, "and if you want to make me happier—save yourself."
"No," said Caspar, roughly—almost violently—"by Heaven, I won't do that."
"You don't wish to save yourself?"
"Not at that price—the price of my honor."
"Listen to me," she said, drawing nearer to him and speaking very softly. "I have made it my business during the last day or two—when I gathered that you would be let out on bail—to collect all the information that might be useful to you. You could get away to-morrow or next day by a vessel that leaves Southampton at the time I have marked on this paper. It is not an ordinary steamer—not a passenger-ship at all—and no one will know that you are on board. It would take you to Oporto. You would be safe enough in the interior—a friend of mine who went there once told me that there were charming palaces and half-ruined castles to let, where one could live as in paradise, amidst the loveliest gardens, full of fountains and birds and flowers."
Her voice took on a caressing tone, as if she were dreaming of perfect happiness. "How like a woman," thought Caspar to himself, "to think only of the material side of life?" Then he corrected himself: "Like some women: not like all, thank-God!"
"So you would condemn me to exile and loneliness as well as to dishonor?" he said. It was as much as he could do not to laugh outright at the chimerical idea.
"It is no exile to a cosmopolitan like yourself to live out of England," she answered, scornfully. "As to dishonor—what will you not have to suffer if you stay in England? Where is your reputation now? And as to loneliness—don't you know—do you not see—that you
need not go—alone?"