“No, no; I shall be well enough when you are quite safe,” said Hilary, her voice faltering. “But—don’t laugh at me, Gabriel!—I feel as if you would be called on to suffer for my sin.”
“Your sin?” he questioned.
“’Tis no idle superstition,” she said, her eyes filling, “’tis an instinct that my punishment will come that way.”
“But what sin? That of playing good Samaritan to a rebel?” said Gabriel, smiling.
“I mean the lie that I told in the orchard,” she said, drooping her head.
“That was as much my fault as yours,” said Gabriel, tenderly. “I moved, and that affrighted you; but to listen to that villain was more than I could endure.”
“Oh, you’ll never know what it was to feel when you were carried here that, but for my cowardice, the duel need never have been fought,” said Hilary. “Had I only kept silence, Waghorn would have been present, and would at least have saved me from Colonel Norton.”
“You were not cowardly!” he protested.
“Yes; to lie is cowardly,” she said. “And it is the one thing I thought I never could do.”
“Dearest,” he said, drawing her nearer to him, “you are not the first who in a moment of peril has lost faith. Though silence would have been best, who would dare to judge you?”