'Oh, alack!' Mary Hall said, and she cast up her hands.
'Well, we are prisoners till he come again,' her brother said good-humouredly. 'But this is a foul hole. Come out into the sunlight.'
She said—
'If you are with them, they cannot come to take me prisoner.'
He looked her full in the eyes with his own that twinkled inscrutably. He said very slowly—
'Were your mar-locks and prinking-prankings so very evil at the old Duchess's?'
She grew white: she shrank away as if he had threatened her with his fist.
'The Queen's Highness was such a child,' she said. 'She cannot remember. I have lived very godly since.'
'I will do what I can to save you,' he said. 'Let me hear about it, as, being prisoners, we may never come off.'
'You!' she cried out. 'You who stole my wedding portion!'