Very softly is Honor playing now—a sort of dirge or lament for the chief of a clan. Suddenly she stops, and her head droops low over the keys. She has forgotten everything but the sore pain at her own heart and the anxious dread that is making every breath a torture to her.
"What if he should be taken to-night?" she is saying to herself. "How do we know that that child is to be trusted? How dare he trust any one when there is such a heavy reward out for him—poor Power?"
The tears come into her eyes as she thinks of him. It grows more bitter to her every moment, the thought of this meeting that is so close at hand now.
"Honor," Brian says gently, "will you not let me help you? You are in some trouble, I know." He has crossed the room and is standing beside her. "You can trust me, surely?"
"I could trust you with my life; but this secret is not my own."
"I know it is not; nevertheless you might trust it to me."
She raises her head and looks at him, and something in his face brings the color into her own. He is very brave and true, a safe shelter in trouble—she has proved that—and her heart yearns for the help he could give her. But it may not be. His sympathies are all on the side of law and order, and she has ranged herself, for this one night at least, among the opposite ranks.
"Don't think me curious, Honor," he says earnestly; "but I am sure you are in need of a friend's help, and I would like you to let me give it."
"No one can help me—not even you," she answers gently, getting up and looking at him with those troubled eyes that move him so strangely.
"And yet you are so good to me always that I should like to tell you my trouble if I might. But it is better not, perhaps."