He drew himself with effort up to the window-sill, from some ledge whereon he had climbed; then, seated, he looked in upon her again; and to his pallid countenance came a ghostly semblance of the old sarcastic smile:—
“Never enquire how I tracked you. I knew that the Rakehell, who chivalrously took you from the charge of your own kin—to rescue you from the plague, forsooth!—would find no shelter for you but that of his own honourable habitation!”
“Lionel…!”
Sudden anger drove all fear from her. He went on:—
“You would have been safer at Chillingburgh House, once the stricken Frenchwoman gone. And so my lord knew as well as I. Our grand dame never died of the sickness, child, but of a fit of anger—and not before her time, either! But let that pass. I saw thee on the Strand, Diana, a while ago—marked thee hither and knew the trick played on thee. A-tramp the whole night, till your body and your spirit be worn out. Is’t not so? And my lord … so tender, so protecting, so fatherly. Is’t not so?”
“Lionel…!”
The man changed his tone:—
“Diana, ’tis but a few hundred paces to her Majesty’s House of the Blue Nuns, in St. Martin’s Lane, where our kinswoman, Madam Anastasia, would shelter you in honour and safety. Come forth now, from this place; ’tis worse, I tell you, than the Pest-house! I will go before thee; I can yet protect thee along the street, if I may not approach thee.…”
Never had Diana heard that ring of passion from his lips; even when he had pleaded for her love, there had always run an undercurrent of mockery and cynicism in the tenderest word. Truly, these days changed all men’s nature. But Diana was not swayed: she was afire at the odiousness of the slander cast on him she loved.