“Because, when I was seeking you, I came across the boy.”
“Among the dead?” asked the lady with the shade of assumed interest which the great take in their inferiors.
“No, only wounded, and I hope he will come round. His chest was crushed in.”
“Ay, against hers,” thought Gilbert.
“But the odd part of it was that I found in his clenched hand a rag from your dress, Andrea,” pursued Philip.
“Odd, indeed; but I saw in this Dance of Death such a series of faces, that I can hardly say whether his figured truly there or not, poor little fellow!”
“But how do you account for the scrap in his grip?” pressed the captain.
“Good gracious! nothing more easy,” rejoined the girl with tranquillity greatly contrasting with the eavesdropper’s frightful throbbing of the heart. “If he were near me and he saw me lifted up, as I stated, by the spell of that man, he might have clutched at my skirts to be saved as the drowning snatch at a straw.”
“Ugh,” grumbled Gilbert, with gloomy contempt for this haughty explanation, “what ignoble interpretation of my devotion! How wrongly these aristocrats judge us people. Rousseau is right in saying that we are worth more than they—our heart is purer and our arms stronger.”
At that he heard a sound behind him.