"We'll make for the bay," said I, "and then seek means to get to London."
Even as I spoke a sudden thought struck me. I laid down my oars and sought my purse. Barbara was not looking at me, but gazed in a dreamy fashion towards where the Castle rose on its cliff. I opened the purse; it held a single guinea; the rest of my store lay with my saddle-bags in the French King's ship; my head had been too full to think of them. There is none of life's small matters that so irks a man as to confess that he has no money for necessary charges, and it is most sore when a lady looks to him for hers. I, who had praised myself for forgetting how to blush, went red as a cock's comb and felt fit to cry with mortification. A guinea would feed us on the road to London if we fared plainly; but Barbara could not go on her feet.
Her eyes must have come back to my sullen downcast face, for in a moment she cried, "What's the matter, Simon?"
Perhaps she carried money. Well then, I must ask for it. I held out my guinea in my hand.
"It's all I have," said I. "King Louis has the rest."
She gave a little cry of dismay. "I hadn't thought of money," she cried.
"I must beg of you."
"Ah, but, Simon, I have none. I gave my purse to the waiting-woman to carry, so that mine also is in the French King's ship."
Here was humiliation! Our fine schemes stood blocked for the want of so vulgar a thing as money; such fate waits often on fine schemes, but surely never more perversely. Yet, I know not why, I was glad that she had none. I was a guinea the better of her; the amount was not large, but it served to keep me still her Providence, and that, I fear, is what man, in his vanity, loves to be in woman's eyes; he struts and plumes himself in the pride of it. I had a guinea, and Barbara had nothing. I had sooner it were so than that she had a hundred.