"I am glad he was not your ambassador," answered Audrey, rather coldly.
"And more I have to confess," he continued. "I see now how cowardly a thing I did in hiding in your house, and bringing you into all this peril—for that also I do most heartily ask your forgiveness."
"It was by my asking you came to my house," she answered, in rather a lofty tone. "If I chose to run risks, it was by mine own will; in that matter there is not anything to pardon."
"You are very generous," he answered, so humbly that Audrey was disarmed, and turned to him with all her old sweetness.
"We women are forbid to fight or to speak for our country," she said. "You will not grudge us the right to suffer somewhat for her liberties."
He looked at her with tender admiration. "Methinks you are on the road to be one of Mr. Rogers's disciples," he said.
She laughed, and for a moment forgot her coldness. "Ay, 'tis perilous to spend so many hours with a madman; very like 'tis catching."
"I was of Mr. Rogers's mind in some things before I even knew him," said Richard. "May I tell you how I learned to be of his mind concerning the liberties of women?"
"I knew not any one else preached such doctrines," she said.
"I learned them from a little maid who fell once into a lily pool," he answered. "I learned from the thought of her to honour all women after another fashion than that which I saw common. I will not boast 'twas constancy; very like it was because so few children came to our house, save my uncle's babes, who died ere they left their nurse's arms; but the memory of that little maid abode with me, and sat with me by camp fires, and kept me company on marches, and the desire to be fit for her company taught me some of the things which Mr. Rogers dares to preach. And she abode with me till last Sunday, and then she vanished, because I knew then that the desire of mine eyes was no more a little maid, but a woman grown."