“Why did you not tell me?” he cried, starting up with clenched hands. “Why did you not give me a hint of this? You know that I would have made every rascal among them answer to me with his life for every insult offered to you.”
“I know that—that was why I kept everything a secret from you,” she said. “The thought that you would be in danger on my account—— Ah, I know that blood has been shed already, and even now I do not feel safe. Captain Mathews—he was the most persistent of my persecutors, and even yet ... he uttered the most terrible threats against me only yesterday. I do not feel secure.”
“I will kill him—I swear to you that you have only to hold up your finger, and I will kill him.”
“I know it, dear Dick—I know it. But do you think that I would consent to your running into danger for me? Oh, I would submit to anything sooner than that you should be put in jeopardy of your life. But I have told you all this that you may the more readily understand why I should be filled with longing to go away and hide myself in some place where there is calm and quiet—some place that has always been in my dreams. It must have come to me with the hearing of the anthem, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd.’ Oh, the vision of the green pastures beside the still waters! Now you know all that there is to be known, and you will not judge me too harshly, Dick?”
CHAPTER XV
He saw the appealing look upon her face, and he knew that he had never seen so pitiful an expression before. Her fear was that he might judge her hastily and harshly. Ah, how could she have such an apprehension so far as he was concerned? He forgot while he looked into her face that there had ever been in his heart any thought of bitterness against her. It was impossible that he could even for a moment have entertained a thought except of sympathy in regard to her.
Did there exist in all the world a girl with so gentle—so sensitive—a nature as was hers? It would, he knew, have been impossible to make most people in the world in which they lived—the shallow, cynical, artificial world of fashion—understand how this girl should shrink from everything that young women in their world hoped to achieve. He knew that Elizabeth Linley was envied even by duchesses. There was no woman too exalted to be incapable of looking on her with envy. Dick Sheridan had heard from time to time the remarks which were made upon her by the grandes dames who frequented the Pump Room. The Duchess of Argyll, who twenty years before, had taken St. James’s by storm, when she was only the younger of the two Miss Gunnings—she had now become Mistress of the Robes and had been made a Peeress in her own right—he heard this great lady say that Miss Linley was the most beautiful young woman in England, and almost equal in this respect to what her own sister, the Countess of Coventry, had been at her age.
And the Duchess of Devonshire—he had heard her say that she was quite content to come to Bath to hear Miss Linley sing once only.