He came a step nearer to her and said, still soberly, still quietly, "I'll go away from here to-morrow."
"Yes, to the meeting," she said, looking up at him brightly from her seat on the wooden bench on the hill-top.
"Away from here," he repeated. "But not to the meeting unless you send me." Then he stood quite still opposite to her for a minute. "Because unless you care for me to do it, I don't care to do it," he went on.
A long silence followed as she sat there, looking past him down into the rich valley that spread from the foot of the hill. The fascination was strong on her, the fear was strong on her too; but for the moment the repulsion was forgotten. For he had risen to the occasion, as Dick Benyon maintained that he always did; not a word too much, not an entreaty too extravagant, not an epithet too florid had found passage from his lips. His instinct of the way to treat a great and important situation had saved him and brought him triumphantly through all the perils. He did not ignore what he was, he did not disguise his knowledge of his powers; knowing what they were and the value of his offering, he laid them all at her feet and asked in return no more than her leave and her command to use them.
She raised her eyes to his pale eager face.
"I send you then," she said. "And now walk with me down the hill and tell me what you'll say at Manchester."
That night, before she went to bed, she wrote to Weston Marchmont;
"Dear Friend,—I will not wait to see you again. I can't do what you wish. Everything else I could do for you, and everything else that you wish I wish for you. But I can't do that."
Alas for the renewed peace of Lady Richard's mind, alas for the returning quiet of Dick Benyon's conscience! Quisanté made his preparations for going with his eyes all agleam, murmuring again and again, "She sends me; she shall see what I'm worth." For one of his great moments had come in the nick of time and done a work that he himself, low as he might now and again fall, could hardly quite undo.