TWELFTH EVENING.
There was an instant when the animal seemed to lose footing, but Brulette just then was between us two, and showed a great deal of courage. When we reached the other bank Huriel again lashed the beasts and put them to a gallop, and it was not until we reached open ground in full view of the sky, and were nearing habitations, that he allowed us to draw breath.
"Now," said he, walking his horse between Brulette and me, "I must blame both of you. I am not a child to have led you into danger and left you there. Why did you run from the spot where I told you to wait for me?"
"It is you who blame us, is it?" said Brulette, rather sharply. "I should have thought it was all the other way."
"Say what you have to say," returned Huriel, gravely. "I will speak later. What do you blame me for?"
"I blame you," she answered, "for not having foreseen the dangerous encounter we were likely to make; I blame you, above all, for giving assurances of safety to my grandfather and me, in order to induce me to leave my home and country, where I am loved and respected, and for having brought me through desolate woods where you were scarcely able to save me from the insults of your friends. I don't know what coarse language they used about me, but I understood enough to see that you were forced to answer for my being a decent girl. So, being in your company was enough to make my character doubted! Ah, what a miserable journey! This is the first time in my life I was ever insulted, and I did not think such a thing could happen to me!"
Thereupon, her heart swelling with mortification and anger, she began to cry. Huriel at first said nothing; he seemed very sad. Then he plucked up courage and replied:—
"It is true, Brulette, that you were misjudged. You shall be revenged, I promise you that. But as I could not punish those men at the time without endangering you, I suffer within me such pangs of baffled rage as I cannot describe to you and you could never comprehend."
Tears cut short his words.