“How meanest thou?” asked Evaline, with some alarm.
“There is a warrant out to arrest me,” answered Don Felix. “It arrived at the Grange last night, with a power from the sheriff; but, by good fortune, I got out by the back way and escaped.”
“Surely, it were better, Sir, to surrender,” said Evaline. “Thou canst not long evade the law.”
“I will evade it altogether,” returned Don Felix. “There is a ship in Topsham harbour, which sails this evening for France; and I will get me aboard her, and flee the country. I can make my way to Spain overland.”
“Oh, no! prithee leave us not now, Felix,” cried Evaline, forgetting all her dislike in her extreme distress, “Thou art innocent of any crime. Wherefore shouldst thou flee?”
“An’ my stay could avail thee, Evaline, or good Sir Edgar, no hazard of mine own self should make me flee,” answered the Spaniard; “but thou knowest that it would not.”
“None, none!” said Evaline. “Yet to be alone—Oh! I have now no comforter on earth!”
There was a brief pause. Though Evaline knew that the stay of Don Felix would afford her no direct advantage, his desertion of her at this moment, when, for aught he knew, she stood alone, afflicted her severely. The world was new to her, and she was not yet aware, what she was so soon to experience, that, in the season of trouble and adversity, friends fall off, and avoid our fallen and declining estate as they would a pestilent contagion. He is, indeed, a friend, above the ordinary meaning of the term, who will meet us in adversity with the same cordiality and welcome, not to say eagerness, that we called forth in the day of our prosperity.
If Evaline had imagined that Don Felix was really in danger, she would have been the first, at any risk to herself, to have urged him to flee. But she was firmly of opinion that the hazard he incurred would be but small; and, which was probably the case, that his fears, as he had expressed them, were more urgent and startling than the occasion would warrant. The conclusion she arrived at was decidedly to his disadvantage; and, comparing his conduct with that of Hildebrand, to whom she and her father were perfect strangers, but who, nevertheless, had befriended them at their need, and his own imminent peril, her unfavourable impression of his character was confirmed, and her previous regard for him entirely alienated.