"Well, Cynthia, dear, it is simply this," says I, going headlong into it. "You find me a ruined gamester, without a friend or a guinea in the world, who even at this moment is being hunted for his debts, and, if I dared say it to you, something worse. Now there is but one way out of it. You cannot stay here; there is not a friend to whom I may confide you; child, you must go back to your father."
Instead of growing red, the colour that shone I am sure in my face, she grew as pale as snow, and her eyes sparkled with a grim beauty that discomposed me more than it charmed me. She rose from the couch, lifted her chin out of her white throat, and kicked the kings and queens and knaves on the carpet in all directions.
"Never," she cried. "I will not go back to my father. I said I would not marry this Mr. Waring; whereon my lord said he would lock me in my room until I was of another mind. And he did lock me in it; and I broke out of it; and I will not go back, no, not if I must subsist on crusts picked from the kennel, and the clothes rot off my body, and I sleep o' nights in a dry ditch or the porch of a church."
"Faith!" says I, "that's well spoke, monstrous well spoke."
"I hate this Mr. Waring," says the little fury. "May I be crost in love, if I do not."
"And if I do not too," says I, "may my heart smoke in purgatory. But come tell me, is it for himself you hate him, or is it for love of me?"
"A plague take all catechisms," says she. "But I will tell you for another kiss."
I think two persons in love could never have been in a worse plight than Cynthia and I. There seemed no course open to us, other than to flee together, we knew not whither. Before even this could be considered, however, we had to find the means.
"What money have you left in your poke?" I asked her.
"Twelvepence exactly and a halfpenny over."