She looked up, startled, yet governing herself, and her hand sought mine and nestled there. “I feel that, too,” she replied. “What is it, Robert?”
“I can not in honour escape from your father’s house. I can not steal his daughter and his safety too—”
“You must escape,” she interrupted firmly.
“From here, from the citadel, from anywhere but your house; and so I will not go to it.”
“You will not go to it?” she repeated slowly and strangely. “How may you not? You are a prisoner. If they make my father your jailer—” She laughed.
“I owe that jailer and that jailer’s daughter—”
“You owe them your safety and your freedom. Oh, Robert, I know, I know what you mean. But what care I what the world may think by-and-bye, or to-morrow, or to-day? My conscience is clear.”
“Your father—” I persisted.
She nodded. “Yes, yes, you speak truth, alas! And yet you must be freed. And”—here she got to her feet, and with flashing eyes spoke out—“and you shall be set free. Let come what will, I owe my first duty to you, though all the world chatter; and I will not stir from that. As soon as I can make it possible, you shall escape.”
“You shall have the right to set me free,” said I, “if I must go to your father’s house. And if I do not go there, but out to my own good country, you shall still have the right before all the world to follow, or to wait till I come to fetch you.”