"It is in your knowledge why now I have no more."
"Yes, it's in my knowledge!" she cried. "Yet I carried Mistress Quinton from Dover."
I made no answer to that. She sighed "Heigho," and for a moment there was silence. But messages pass without words, and there are speechless Mercuries who carry tidings from heart to heart. Then the air is full of whisperings, and silence is but foil to a thousand sounds which the soul hears though the dull corporeal ear be deaf. Did she still amuse herself, or was there more? Sometimes a part, assumed in play or malice, so grows on the actor that he cannot, even when he would, throw aside his trappings and wash from his face the paint which was to show the passion that he played. The thing takes hold and will not be thrown aside; it seems to seek revenge for the light assumption and punishes the bravado that feigned without feeling by a feeling which is not feint. She was now, for the moment if you will, but yet now, in earnest. Some wave of recollection or of fancy had come over her and transformed her jest. She stole round till her face peeped into mine in piteous bewitching entreaty, asking a sign of fondness, bringing back the past, raising the dead from my heart's sepulchre. There was a throbbing in my brain; yet I had need of a cool head. With a spring I was on my feet.
"I'll go and ask if Mistress Barbara sleeps," I stammered. "I fear she may not be well attended."
"You'll go again? Once scorned, you'll go again, Simon? Well, the maid will smile; they'll make a story of it among themselves at their supper in the kitchen."
The laugh of a parcel of knaves and wenches! Surely it is a small thing! But men will face death smiling who run wry-faced from such ridicule. I sank in my chair again. But in truth did I desire to go? The dead rise, or at least there is a voice that speaks from the tomb. A man tarries to listen. Well if he be not lost in listening!
With a sigh Nell moved across the room and flung the window open. The loiterers were gone, all was still, only the stars looked in, only the sweet scent of the night made a new companion.
"It's like a night at Hatchstead," she whispered. "Do you remember how we walked there together? It smelt as it smells to-night. It's so long ago!" She came quickly towards me and asked "Do you hate me now?" but did not wait for the answer. She threw herself in a chair near me and fixed her eyes on me. It was strange to see her face grave and wrung with agitation; yet she was better thus, the new timidity became her marvellously.
There was a great clock in the corner of the old panelled room; it ticked solemnly, seeming to keep time with the beating of my heart. I had no desire to move, but sat there waiting; yet every nerve of my body was astir. Now I watched her every movement, took reckoning of every feature, seemed to read more than her outward visage showed and to gain knowledge of her heart. I knew that she tempted me, and why. I was not a fool, to think that she loved me; but she was set to conquer me, and with her there was no price that seemed high when the prize was victory or a whim's fulfilment.
I would have written none of this, but that it is so part and marrow of my history that without it the record of my life would go limping on one leg.