Even now he could not rid himself of the easy hunting days, the easy conquests, which had built up a wall of self-security about him. “You’ll give it me before the month is out, Nance? You promised it,” he said, edging his horse nearer hers.
Nance took a kerchief from the pocket of her riding-coat. “Why, yes,” she said, “I keep my word. You may claim it.”
He took it, put it to his lips, all with the over-done effrontery of a groom who finds the master’s daughter stooping to him. “I shall keep it,” he said—“until the next true Rising comes.”
“Yes,” said Nance submissively. “You may keep it, Mr. Underwood.”
“Nay, call me Will!” he blundered on. “Listen, Nance. When I spoke of prudence just now, I—I lied. You stung me into saying what I did not mean. There were reasons kept me here. You’ll believe me, surely? Urgent reasons. And here I am, eating my heart out while other men are taking happy risks.”
Nance glanced once at him. His voice was persuasive as of old; he had the same easy seat in saddle, the handsome, dash-away figure that had given him a certain romantic place of his own among his intimates; but there was something new. She understood, with sudden humiliation and self-pity, how slight a thing first love may be. And, because he had forced this knowledge on her, she would not spare him.
“You may keep it,” she repeated. “The enemy may come to Windyhough, and you will need a flag of truce, as the old men and the disabled will—and my kerchief—it will serve as well as another.”
She was alone with him, here on the empty moor, and had only a broken-winded horse to help her if need asked. Yet her disdain of him was so complete, her humiliation so bitter, that she had no fear. She spoke slowly, quietly; and Underwood reined his horse back a little, as if she had struck him with her riding-whip.
“All this because I’ll not risk my head for a wild-cat plot to put a Stuart on the throne?”
“Oh, not for that reason. Because you promised to risk your head; because, in time of peace, you persuaded loyal gentlemen that you were one of them; because, Mr. Underwood, you ran away before you had ever seen the enemy.”