'But without a guide——'
'Fear not for that—I shall provide you with a guide too,' she replied with a bright and tender smile; and so ended this strange interview, which, for a little time at least, had served to lure him from his troubles, yet had added to his perplexity; for he felt that if Margarita saved him from impending peril—and that she would do so at all hazard he never doubted—that circumstance would load him with a debt of gratitude which the devotion of his future life could—in her estimation—alone repay!
CHAPTER VIII.
BAFFLED!
There could be no doubt that Cecil had interested Margarita tenderly and deeply. She had studied him closely; she was acute, and had gathered, from much he had mentioned incidentally at Palenka, that he had been unfortunate already in life, young though he was, and that he had 'a history,' as Mary Montgomerie and Annabelle Erroll had surmised before.
She guessed that his boyhood and youth had not been quite happy, and this, more from his reserve concerning them than from confessions made. She gathered, too, that over his early years no father's love or protection had been thrown; that he had no brother or sister, but had possessed a mother on whose memory he doted, and at the mention of whose name she saw the expression of his eyes soften, and heard at times his voice grow tremulous; and she loved him all the more for the little halo of mystery that seemed to surround him.
And she had remarked, with pain, how the rich gloss had left his dark brown hair, and that there were haggard lines about his eyes and mouth; and that much of the soldierly débonnaire frankness and manner in his bearing was gone now.
Empowered by the possession of Tchernaieff's signed permission 'for the bearer to visit the prisoner,' and encouraged by the absence of her brother Palenka at the headquarters of General Dochtouroff, she came again at noon to make final arrangements for his escape and flight.
'But how to get out of Deligrad?' said he, after their first greetings were over; and here we may mention that, literally, grad means a fortress in that part of the world.
'That will be my task,' replied Margarita.