“Is extravagance royal?” Evelyn inquired, and her voice was hard, for she weighed Ledward’s remark.
“I admit I don’t know; but Kit’s royalty is not modern and constitutional. He goes back to the old spacious days of the minstrels and wandering knights. Perhaps Richard Lion-heart is his type. You can picture Kit’s stealing across Austria; he’d think it a first-class joke. Was he not something like a minstrel at the Canadian camp? Richard, however, did not cheat his enemy, and to get him out of jail cost his subjects much.”
Evelyn smiled, but she wondered whether Harry implied that others must pay for Kit’s exploits. If it were so, he did not exaggerate, for she had begun to meet the bill.
They crossed the edge of the tableland; the road went down steeply and in the distance the reflections from a furnace glimmered in the sky. Lights dotted the dale, and chimney-stacks and smoke marked a coalpit. A shining train curved along the hillside and vanished. Then the road went round a bend and Ledward slowed the engine.
“The moors and the moonlight are done with. We are going down to the gas-lamps and ground we know; in fact, I think we are going where we belong.”
“It looks as if you were happy to get back,” said Evelyn.
“Oh, well, when you’re not romantic the heights are bleak and cold. On the whole I’m not romantic. My job’s where people make things and dispute about the price.”
“You like a safe job?”
“Safety first is a useful rule,” Ledward agreed. “For all that, where I thought a risk worth while I might risk something.”
The hill got steeper and he concentrated on his driving. Dry-stone walls enclosed boggy fields, and one side a high bank bordered the curving road. The splash of water indicated that a little beck flowed through the gloom.