She mused a moment or two happily, sublimely ignorant of all the forces that warred between; of what caused the shadow; of the power of a dead face; of the pride of a resolute man; of that attractive Huguenot Dutchman biding his time down south.
At last Meryl broke the silence. As she sat gazing through the open doorway her mind had lingered unconsciously over that last sentence. "Major Carew, when he is here, loves just to sit and look at it," and in her fancy she saw the silent, watching form of the grim soldier-policeman.
"He is an interesting man," she said simply. "I think I understood he was some connection of yours?"
"You mean Major Carew? Yes; he is a distant sort of cousin, but we are two entirely different branches of the family, and had drifted widely apart until we three met out here. Yet it was not surprising we should meet like this. The Carews were always wanderers and adventurers, like Drake and Frobisher and the other fine old pirates. A humdrum career in the Blues would hardly have continued to satisfy Major Carew, any more than the conventions and hide-bound prejudices of the Established Church could hold my husband."
"Yet, if you will forgive my seeming rudeness, both of them apparently took a decided step downwards from the social point of view."
"That would not trouble either of them for a moment. They sought Freedom, and found it."
"Yet it meant, in a sense, what some people call being buried alive."
"Ah, those people do not understand. That is how I took it at first. Shall I tell you a little, or will it bore you?"
"Please tell me. I think it is kind of you to trust me so soon with your confidence."
Ailsa smiled. "One always knows. Anyone with insight would trust you instinctively. But there isn't much to tell. Only that when I married my husband he held a living in Shropshire, with a sure promise of quick promotion; and then Doubt crept in which he could not overthrow, and after a long struggle he gave it up because his conscience would not let him be a hypocrite."