"Silence, child! Let me go! Stay you within an you are afraid!"
There was a moment's silence, for at sound of her voice Beau Brocade had started, then he leaned forward on his horse, listening with all his might, wondering if indeed his ears had not misled him, if 'twas not a dream-voice that came to him out of the gloom.
"Have I the honour of addressing Lady Rounce?" he murmured mechanically.
At this moment the darkness, which up to now had been intense, began slowly to give place to a faint, silvery light. The moon, pale and hazy, tried to pierce the mist that still enveloped her as with a cold, blue mantle, and one by one tipped blackthorn and gorse with a cluster of shimmering diamonds.
Like a ghostly panorama the heath revealed its thousand beauties, its many mysteries: the deep, dark tangle of bramble and ling, beneath which hide the gnomes and ghouls, the tiny blue cups of the harebells, wherein the pixies have their home; the fairy rings in the grass, where the sprites dance their wild saraband on nights such as this, with the crickets to play the tunes, and the glow-worms to light them in their revels.
But to Beau Brocade the dim radiance of the moon, shy and golden through her veil of mist, only revealed one great, one wonderful picture: that of his dream made real, of his heavenly vision come down to earth, the picture of her stepping out of the coach that she might speak to him.
She came forward quickly, and the hood flew back from her face. She was looking at him with a half-puzzled, half-haughty expression in her eyes, and Beau Brocade thought he had never seen eyes that were so deeply blue. He murmured her name,—
"The Lady Patience!"
"Nay, sir, since you know my name," she said, with a quaint, almost defiant toss of her small, graceful head. "I pray you, whoever you may be, to let me depart in peace. See," she added, holding a heavy purse out to him, "I have brought you what money I have. Will you take it and let me go?"
But he dared not speak. He longed to turn Jack o' Lantern's head and to gallop away quickly out of her sight, before she had recognised him and learnt that the man on whom she had looked with such tender pity, and with such glowing admiration, was the highway robber, the outlaw, the notorious thief. Yet so potent was the spell of her voice, the moist shimmer of her lips, the depth and glitter of her blue eyes, that he felt as if iron fetters held him fast to the ground, there enchained before her, until at least she should speak again.