“Why, to be sure-but let us talk on less painful matters.”
“In one moment, sir: but first tell me—where did she die, and when?”
For my heart stood still, and I was fain to clutch the table between us to keep me from falling. I think this did not escape him, for he gave me a sharp look, and then spoke very quiet and hush’d,
“She was cruelly kill’d by highwaymen, at the ‘Three Cups’ inn, some miles out of Hungerford. The date given me is the 3d of December last.”
With this a great rush of joy came over me, and I blurted out, delighted—
“There, sir, you are wrong! Her father was kill’d on the night of which you speak—cruelly enough, as you say: but Mistress Delia Killigrew escaped, and after the most incredible adventures—”
I was expecting him to start up with joy at my announcement; but instead of this, he gaz’d at me very sorrowfully and shook his head; which brought me to a stand.
“Sir,” I said, changing my tone, “I speak but what I know: for ’twas I had the happy fortune to help her to escape, and, under God’s hand, to bring her safe to Cornwall.”
“Then, where is she now?”
Now this was just what I could not tell. So, standing before him, I gave him my name and a history of all my adventures in my dear comrade’s company, from the hour when I saw her first in the inn at Hungerford. Still keeping his finger on the page, he heard me to the end attentively, but with a curling of the lips toward the close, such as I did not like. And when I had done, to my amaze he spoke out sharply, and as if to a whipp’d schoolboy.