Margaret stood still for a moment. Then she hurried after her. "Garda," she said, "I beg you not to go; I beg you here on my knees, if that will move you. Your mother left you to me, I stand in her place; think what she would have wished. Oh, my dear child, it would be very wrong to go, listen to me and believe me."
Garda, struck by her agitation, had stopped; with a sort of soft outcry she had prevented her from kneeling. "Margaret! you kneel to me?—you dear, good, beautiful Margaret! You care so much about it, then?—so very much?"
"More than anything in the world," Margaret answered, in a voice unlike her own.
With one of her sudden impulses, Garda exclaimed, "Then I won't go! But somebody must tell Lucian," she added.
"Do you mean that he expects you?"
"Not at the house. When he came over to say good-by, of course I made up my mind at once that I should see him again in some way before he started; so when you had gone out on the barren (as I supposed), I wrote a note and sent Pablo over with it."
"Oh, Garda! trust a servant—"
"Why, Pablo would let himself be torn to pieces before he would betray a Duero; I verily believe he thinks he's a Duero himself—a Duero a little sunburnt! To show you how much confidence I have in him—in the note I asked Lucian to take this path, and come as far as the pool, where I would meet him at a certain hour. Then, after it was scaled, I remembered that I had not said clearly enough which path I meant (there are three, you know), and so I told Pablo to say to Mr. Spenser that I meant the eastern one. If I hadn't been afraid he would forget some of it, I should have trusted the old man with the whole message, and not taken the trouble to write at all. Well, after the note had gone I went to sleep. And then, when I woke, it came over me suddenly how much nicer it would be to see Lucian in the house instead of in the woods—for one thing, we could have chairs, you know—and so I came over earlier than I had at first intended, in order to get to Madam Giron's before he would be starting for the pool. But you have kept me so long that he must be starting now."
"Let us go home at once," said Margaret.
"No, I can't let him go to the pool, and wait and wait there all for nothing.—Who's that?" she added, in a startled voice.