Ned turned away, sick at heart; then flashed round upon the man again in a fury.
“The beast! the philosophic egoist! Thou must carry him another message from me.”
“Truly, when I can,” said the jailer.
It must be when he could. In the meantime the distracted captive was faced by the prospect of fresh long hours of cold, gloom, and anxiety. Again the morning dawdled on to mid-day, to the desolate turn from noon. His lunch was brought in by a stranger turnkey, taciturn and unapproachable. Ned let him go without a commission. His agitation could not stomach food.
At last, when, about four o’clock in the afternoon, he was feeling that, unless soon relieved, he must pay with his reason for that little act of humane interference, steps sounded coming hurriedly down the corridor, the key turned in the lock, the door was flung open, and there entered the room—the young lord, Pamela’s betrothed.
He was full of quick manliness and pity.
“My dear lord!” he cried—“my dear lord!”
He took Ned’s hand; wrung it with hard, sympathetic fervour.
“I was with Vergniaud and Tommy Paine last night, after your note had been received by the minister. It is the vilest piece of official insolence! Vergniaud will make hell about it; I will make hell. He was frantically engaged at the time, and begged me to represent him in this release of his dear friend. A certain lady was deeply concerned this morning to hear about it. She would drive me down by-and-by on the way to her dressmaker. I have come the moment I was able; have made inquiries, learnt the truth, procured the release of your servant, and given these scoundrels a foretaste of what they are to expect.”
He was amazingly frank and cordial. For a moment Ned was stupefied from any thought of response. He looked into the handsome, intelligent face, and a dull realisation of his own inefficiency as a suitor possessed him. “Would this romantic Fortunatus,” might have been his fancy, “have ever committed himself to a situation so ridiculous as this of mine?” His lordship was of the soldierly type, very upright and spruce. He wore at his neck a kerchief of the green that was later to bring him into trouble. And the unhappy prisoner, for a contrast, was haggard, unshorn, unkempt—his coat dusted with litter from the floor.