Zoe began to be puzzled a little. But she said, “You have been a long time discovering all these grievances. Why have you held no communication all this time?”
“Because you were inaccessible. Does not your own heart tell you that I have been all these weeks trying to communicate, and unable? Why, I came three times under your window at night, and you never, never would look out.”
“I did look out ever so often.”
“If I had been you, I should have looked ten thousand times. I only left off coming when I heard the keepers were ordered to shoot me down. Not that I should have cared much, for I am desperate. But I had just sense enough left to see that, if my dead body had been brought bleeding into your hall some night, none of you would ever have been happy again. Your eyes would have been opened, all of you. Well, Zoe, you left Vizard Court; that I learned: but it was only this morning I could find out where you were gone: and you see I am here—with a price upon my head. Please read Vizard's advertisements.”
She took them and read them. A hot flush mounted to her cheek.
“You see,” said he, “I am to be imprisoned if I set my foot in Barfordshire. Well, it will be false imprisonment, and Mademoiselle Klosking's lover will smart for it. At all events, I shall take no orders but from you. You have been deceived by appearances. I shall do all I can to undeceive you, and if I cannot, there will be no need to imprison me for a deceit of which I was the victim, nor to shoot me like a dog for loving you. I will take my broken heart quietly away, and leave Barfordshire, and England, and the world, for aught I care.”
Then he cried: and that made her cry directly.
“Ah!” she sighed, “we are unfortunate. Appearances are so deceitful. I see I have judged too hastily, and listened too little to my own heart, that always made excuses. But it is too late now.”
“Why too late?”
“It is.”