“In that case,” said Driscoll quietly, “I will leave you at the river junction. When I see that you are safely at the hacienda––”
“You will go back to America?”
“That need not worry you.”
“Then you are not going back, back to your own country?” He would keep on to the City alone. She would have no chance to intercept him. After all Fate had been good to her–no, cruel!–to cast him in her path. “You might find the Austrian escort safer than going alone,” she said enticingly.
He hesitated. What all this was about, he could not imagine. He knew nothing, naturally, of the dark intrigues of an enigmatical adventurer far away in the Tuileries, nor how they could affect him. And so he put away as absurd the fancy that she in her turn might interfere with him. Besides, he was tempted.
“It’s a go!” he said.
She for her part was thinking, hoping, rather, that perhaps she was mistaken. Perhaps he only bore the offer of a paltry few hundred, a handful of homeseekers from his regiment. She hoped so. She would have prayed for it, had praying occurred to her.
209CHAPTER XXVI
The Strangest Avowal of Love
“Nae living man I’ll love again,
Since that my lovely knight is slain.”