"At first I dared not believe it could be you; indeed I knew of no one who could bring me deliverance;" and still she kept her hood closely around her head, answering nothing.
"Your heart is kind," I went on, "and unlike women generally, you are not afraid of danger. Believe me, I am not ungrateful. I am your servant for life. I am afraid you are still in danger, and I rejoice that I am free to help you."
Daylight was now dawning, indeed I could see the colour of her gray cloak plainly.
"Will you not pull aside your hood?" I said, scarcely thinking of my words.
She did not obey me, but I noticed her gloved hand tremble. I saw, too, that she reeled in her saddle.
"You are ill!" I cried, and then I rushed to her side, for she was falling from her horse. During the hours of danger and hard riding she had shown no sign of weakness, but now the danger was far behind, her woman's weakness overcame her.
As I caught her, she fell in my arms like one in a dead faint; so I laid her carefully on the grassy bank beside the road. By this time the other woman had dismounted and had come to her side.
"Watch here, while I go and fetch some water," I cried, and then seeing a pool near by, I stooped and scooped some in the hollow of my hand. When I came back, however, she was sitting up, and both women had drawn their hoods more closely around their faces. If it were Mistress Nancy, she did not wish me to recognize her. But it must be she, for who else would have gone through so much to come to me? She must have travelled with her companion some sixty miles through a lonely part of the country in order to get to Launceston, and when there must have braved all sorts of dangers in order to effect my liberty. The thought made my heart swell with such pride and joy that my bosom seemed too small to contain it. In spite of my baseness in selling myself to Peter Trevisa, she could not altogether despise me. I knew now that I had never loved the maid to whom I thought I had given my heart as a boy. My feeling for her was only a passing passion, of no more importance than chaff, and as light as thistledown. But all was different now. I was thirty-two years of age, and I had given all the strength of my life to her. True, my tongue was tied. I could not tell her of the fire that burned in my heart—I was, I knew, unworthy. By that fatal confession, as we rode by Tregothnan Gates through Tresillian, I had forever made it impossible that she could think of me as I thought of her. Besides, I was homeless and landless. Looking at her as she sat there on the dewy bank that early spring morning, I would rather have lost my right arm than take the wages of my service to Peter Trevisa. The purity and truth of her life roused within me the nobility of my race. Better be a beggar from door to door than accept the prize of base service. I who had ceased to believe in the goodness of women, now realized that this maid made me ashamed of all the past and caused to arise in me a longing for the pure and the true. But my love for her was none the less hopeless. How could it be, when I was minute by minute dogged by the memory of the hour when I promised to be a Judas?
"Are you better?" I asked as gently as I could, for I knew how boorish I had become through the years.