"Dick is in the hall, looking for me, go you to him and warn him. I may not pass the door, as you have seen."
"He will not escape without you," she demurred.
"Tell him he must. Tell him I say he must!"
She glanced over her shoulder with a look in her eyes that made me think of a wounded bird fluttering in the net of the fowler.
"Oh, 'tis hard, hard!" she murmured.
I snatched the word from her lips. "To choose between love and wifely duty? Then I make it a command. Go, quickly!"
She went at that, and I made my way slowly to the far side of the ball-room, taking post in a deep-recessed window giving upon the lawn. Though it was January and the night was chill and raw, the rooms were summer warm with the breath of the crush, and some one had swung the casement.
Without, I could hear the horses of the waiting troop champing restlessly at their bits, and now and again the low gentling words of the riders. Why the colonel did not spring his trap at once I could not guess; though I learned later that he had magnified our two-man spying venture into a patriot foray meant to capture the whole houseful of British officers at a swoop, and was taking his measures accordingly.
'Twas while I was listening to the champing horses that I heard my name whispered in the darkness beyond the open casement; I turned slowly, and the nearest of the soldier watchers began to edge his way toward my window.
"'Tis I—Dick Jennifer," whispered the voice without. "Swing the casement a little wider and out with you. Be swift about it, for God's sake!"