"Told me what?"
"That I desire to be a friend to you."
"I have tried to believe so," was her answer. "I have tried to trust you, but I cannot. If you would be my friend, tell me plainly what led you to Endellion. Tell me why you kept silence when I asked you the other night. I need a friend—sadly. I am hedged around by those who seek to do me ill. But I cannot trust a man who by every action betrays an evil purpose."
"Methinks you trusted me to fight Benet Killigrew," I retorted. "You trusted me to bring you so far. Have I betrayed that trust?"
"I will be frank with you," was her answer. "When I heard of your answers to Otho, when I was told that you preferred imprisonment rather than promise him that you would not seek to set me at liberty, I doubted myself. I thought I had been unjust to you. I wrote and told you so. When I heard of your escape through mastering Benet, and thought of what it meant, I doubted myself more still. As you know, I was in sore straits, and when I heard of what my maid told me, I could not believe that a gentleman would prove false to a defenceless maid. Thus I risked everything in my desire for freedom, and because I was trying to believe in you. I believed in you as you fought Benet; but when we were alone together I shrunk from you in spite of myself. I seemed to see the mask that you wore. Perchance I appear ungrateful, for indeed, you have so far behaved as a man of honour should, but every minute my heart is telling me that you are a traitor, and that you have purposes of your own of which you dare not speak."
As she spoke, it seemed as though my heart were laid bare to her gaze. I saw myself a miserable spy, a traitor to the name I bore. I cursed myself for having aught to do with the maid who was so wise, and wished that I had spurned Peter Trevisa's overtures. Moreover anger burnt in my heart against her, and my tongue was unloosed. Unmindful of consequence I answered her in wrath.
"You call me a traitor," I cried, "because I do not flatter and favour; because I do not make love to you like Otho Killigrew or his brother Benet. You trust John Polperro rather than me, because he comes with honeyed words telling of a love which perchance he doth not feel. Benet Killigrew would take you from Endellion because he would marry you and your estates. Otho got a priest to come there with the same end in view. Polperro is smooth-spoken, but would he render Nancy Molesworth the service he promises if Restormel did not exist? Well, I come to you with no honeyed words. I do not tell you that I love you, for in truth I do not. I love no woman, and will end my life without taking a wife. But am I a traitor because of that? You accuse me of not telling you all that is in my mind. Cannot a man have an honourable secret? May I not have honourable purposes and yet not be able to divulge them? This accusation seems a poor reward to a man who hath endangered both liberty and life to bring you so far."
I saw that my answer had its effect. Her lips quivered and her eyes became softer.
"I am not forgetful of your services, and perchance I am unkind, but in all my life my heart hath never told me wrong," she said. "All the same I will trust you if you will answer me one fair question. If you had a sister, a dear one, in such dire extremity as I am, would you have her done by as you have it in your heart to do by me?"
Again I was tongue-tied, and my eyes fell before hers. I thought of her as being the wife of young Peter Trevisa, I thought of the net which the two Trevisas were probably trying to weave around her just then, and I stood dumb, like a boy caught in the act of stealing.