“Without knowing what?” she replied, cutting me short. “Why we are here?” And then in a different tone, “Do you know, sir, why we are here?”
“No,” I said, in astonishment. For she who had all day been so calm, so cool, so steadfast, now spoke with a wildness that alarmed me. “Why?”
“To put you,” she replied, “into the power of those with whom you will fare as my father fares! Do you understand, sir? To make you a hostage for him, your life for his life, your freedom for his freedom! Do you know that there are those, in yonder house, who are waiting for you,—who are waiting for you, and who, if my father suffers, will do to you as your friends do to him? Do you know that it was for that that I brought you hither; yes, for that! And now, now that I am here, I cannot do it—” her voice sank to a whisper—“even to save my father!”
A dry painful sob shook her in the saddle. She clung to the pommel, the reins fell from her hands, the tired horse under her hung its head. “Good Lord!” I whispered. “Good Lord! And you brought me here for that.”
“Yes,” she said, “for that.”
“And—and Lord Cornwallis—you knew that you had nothing to expect from him?” She bowed her head. “But did you not know, Miss Wilmer, that this—this, too, was hopeless? Insane, mad? Did you not know that Lord Rawdon would as soon depart from his duty in order to save me, as the sun from his course?”
“Men have been saved that way,” she cried, with something of her old spirit. “And you are his friend, sir, you have influence, you have rank, oh, he would do much to save you! Yes, I might have saved my father! I might have preserved him—and now!” her chin sank again upon her breast.
“It was a mad plot!” I said.
“But it might have saved him,” she whispered. “My lord spoke warmly of you, he shewed me your sword on the table. Yes, I might have saved my father—but I could not do it. And now—” Her voice died away.
“It was a mad plot,” I repeated. However strong her belief, I, of course, knew that such a step was hopeless; that no danger in which I might stand would turn Rawdon from his duty, but on the contrary would stiffen him in it. It was a mad plan. But apparently she had believed in it, apparently she had trusted in it; and at the last she had been unable to harden her heart to carry it through! Why? I asked myself the question.