Chartley and Iola are now alone; for the Arab had left them. But yet she did not and she would not fear, for she had great confidence in her companion, and woman's confidence is of a very capacious measure. Nor did he wrong it--shame upon him who does--but, guiding her quietly to the flight of steps leading into the keep, he made her sit down upon the dilapidated stairs, and stood beside her, talking about subjects which could awake no emotion, or a very slight one, and, informing her that he had sent the slave to seek for materials to light a fire. None of those events, however, occurred, which continually happen to people cast upon a desert island. There were none of those appliances or means at hand, with which wandering sailors are usually supplied accidentally. No bituminous pine was found to fulfil the office of a torch; and at length after the Arab's return, the only resource of the fugitives was to light a fire, after the most ancient and approved fashion, by a flint and steel. This, however, was accomplished with less difficulty than might have been expected, the young lord's dagger supplying the steel, and flints being numerous in the neighbourhood. The old brown leaves, and the young but well-dried shoots, soon caught the flame; and in a few minutes the joyous light was spreading round the old court yard, and raising Iola's spirits by the very look.
"Ah, now we can rest here in comfort," said, the young lady gazing around her; "but the light is not yet sufficient to see the inside of the hall."
"But still you cannot sleep here, sweet Iola," answered her companion. "I and the slave will go in and light a fire in the hall, if you will tend this in the meanwhile."
"Nay," she answered, "I want not to sleep;" and she detained him gently by the arm. "Let us sit down here. See here is a stone bench bowered in the ivy. We can pass the night in telling tales; and first you shall inform me how you came hither on foot in the forest, when I thought you had gone away for Leicester."
Lord Chartley easily satisfied her on that point; and seated on the stone bench by her side, as near as possible, gazing from time to time on her bright countenance, by the gleams of the firelight, he related to her all that had occurred to him since he had left the abbey.
"As to my being on foot," he said, "your good friend the woodman judged it best that I and my Arab should leave our horses at his hut, for fear of attracting attention. All I hope is, that they will not be found there by these good gentlemen, who are watching the wood; for it might be dangerous if they were recognised as my property."
"There is a great risk indeed," said Iola anxiously. "What will you do if such should be the case?"
"As best I can," answered Chartley. "I never premeditate, dear lady; for I always remark that those who go lightly and carelessly through the world go the farthest. The circumstances of the moment determine my conduct; and as I have no ties to bind me but those of honour and truth, no ambitious schemes to be frustrated or executed, no deeds done that I am ashamed of, so I have never any great store of fears for the future, nor much need of forming plans at any time for after action."
"Happy are those," answered Iola, with a sigh, "who, as you say, have no ties to bind them."
Her reply was a natural one, springing at once from what was passing in her own heart. Something had whispered that it would be better to tell her companion, that her own fate was linked to another, that she had been contracted in fact in infancy, by her relations, to a person of whom she knew nothing. The thought of informing him of her fate, however, led her to think of that fate itself; and thence came the sigh and the answer that she made. But as soon as it was uttered, she felt that it rendered more difficult, nay impossible, the task of telling the circumstances as she had meditated. The words she had just spoken, the sigh she had just breathed, expressed too clearly the regret that she really felt; but to explain to him the source of that regret, to show him the nature of the tie that oppressed her, would, she thought, be unwomanly and indecent.