"No, but I would warn him if I could," I replied gravely, and so told her everything as it had befallen me.
"Always that Malpas!" whispered the maid, and trembled so I had to clasp her tight to me.
"He does not know you are here, that is clear," I said, as indeed it was manifest to both of us.
"My guardian hath used this place often ere this," said Idonia, "and I suppose none thought to prate of what happened ordinarily."
"Perhaps he has left you to seek out Malpas," I conjectured, and at this she nodded.
"They have had some design in hand together this great while, of which I know nothing."
I did not tell her that I knew it well enough, and was even commissioned to prevent it, but said—
"Wherever he hath gone, Malpas hath certainly gone to seek him; but he must not be found."
"You owe him small thanks," whispered Idonia, her head low down, "and if this intends a danger to you..."
I did not suffer her to finish, but asked whether she were well enough acquainted with the house to know of any means of egress from it, besides the doors that were so straitly watched. She thought a great while before she replied how, once, it might be eight years since, she being lodged there, she had gone upon some occasion into the cellars, and remembered to have noted that the window which lighted it was a sort of grate within the river wall and was even then decayed and corrupted by the salt water, so that by this time it should, she thought, be easily broken through.