Rockhurst had had Heaven or Hades knew what vast experience of women, of the women of Second Charles’s Court, whether in exile or in Whitehall. Scarce a challenging beauty of the posy that he had not measured swords with; and, as the practised fencer will, he knew every trick of the play, every line of assault and defence, every feint and every parry. And women, being proverbially unfair fighters, pretty dears! he had a smile as well as a wary eye for the tricky pass and the treacherous thrust. Of all the feints, that of innocence in straits, of outraged modesty, was the most elementary. This divine young creature with the copper-glowing hair and the wide-dilating eyes; whose blood ran so richly and so quickly; who had come in leaning familiarly on the arm of that prince of petty rakes, Paul Farrant, come willingly, it seemed, across the snows, to his bidding; who had suffered herself to be unshod with all the unblushing ease of any Whitehall coquette—why, if it now pleased her to play the pretty Puritan, he had no objection, save that, as he knew himself, he was apt to be swiftly wearied. The spark of interest kindled by her unaccustomed kind of beauty, by the something fresh and of the woodland about her, by the utter unexpectedness of her appearance and the mystery it pleased him she should maintain, would so soon flicker out. In love, as in war, he had but one method—straight ahead. In war he had been beaten back sometimes; in love, never.
“Come,” he said, sitting up at last and slowly stretching out one hand. “Come, Diana, since Diana you will be.” (Again she started on hearing herself unwittingly called by her real name.) “Be Diana, if you please, to me. What if I am no Endymion? Bah, my dear goddess,” and he drew his lean frame out of the chair and came over to her with the same deliberate grace, “that was a little mistake of yours to be so ready to stoop to yonder youth! Endymion is but a callow rascal, a greenhorn. When such beings as you descend from your high celestial ways it should be for a man! Come, do you wish me to kneel at your feet, as your shepherd did even now? I will, an’ it please you.”
His arms were almost about her, when, with a fierce movement, she sprang up and thrust him from her.
“In the name of God,” she cried, “into what trap have I fallen?”
“Nay, do not scream,” he said, at one step placing himself between her and the door, and catching her wrist, without roughness, but with that steel-like grasp she had instinctively divined under his gentle movements. “Let us clear this strange matter between us two, madam.—Answer you first: What purpose had you in coming here to-night?”
“I?” she flashed back at him, panting. “Purpose?—Purpose, sir?… That young man found me in the snow, the coach had foundered, my servants ridden away for help, I was perished from cold. Purpose? Let me go, sir. Rather the snow! Oh, let me hence from your horrible house!”
He released her and stood looking at her in silence. Again, even in her turmoil of terror and passion, she was struck by the extraordinary dignity of his air. But to look thus, and to act thus!
“Oh, shame,” she said; “you who might be my father!”
A swift shadow came over his countenance, then passed, leaving it set into marble impassivity. His eyelids drooped. Forgetting her cloak on the chair, forgetting her shoeless feet, she thought she saw her chance, and made a rush for the door; but he arrested her with a gesture.