“You are shivering!” she exclaimed the next minute. “What is amiss?”
But Gabriel did not easily put his deepest feelings into words; he could not explain to her at that moment what fighting for the right might mean for him, any more than years ago he could have told her of his childish wish to follow in Eliot’s steps. The torture of the sudden perception that the cause he had learned to hold sacred would assuredly lose for him Hilary’s sympathy and approval made him silently turn to her and clasp her in his arms with a passion far too deep for speech. Then, releasing her, he hastily rose, and picking up the basket of apricots, resumed with an effort his usual manner.
“Do you not want these carried to the still-room?” he asked. “Stoning is the next process, if I remember right.”
“Why, to be sure,” said Hilary, laughing. “Stoning with a good deal of eating intermixed. I think one in twenty used to be Durdle’s allowance.”
“Here she comes to set the limit,” said Gabriel, with a smile. “She bustles about more briskly than ever; and look how her face beams!—something extraordinary must have happened.”
“Miss Hilary, such news!” cried the housekeeper, her fat face wreathed in smiles. “Haste, my dear, and hear it all from the Bishop’s secretary who is talking to the mistress at the front door. He is going to ride straight over to Whitbourne and tell his lordship.”
“But what is it, Durdle? What has happened?”
“Why, thank God! the Roundheads have been beaten near Worcester—go and hear what Mr. Jenkinson is telling of the rout.”
Hilary clapped her hands with delight.
“Good new’s, indeed! come, Gabriel, let us hear all about it,” and she ran into the house eagerly.