So we continued for a space, till suddenly her sobs ceased and she sprang up to her feet before me. I rose too, stepping a little back from her. I dared not go near, for her eyes were glittering, her cheeks flushed, and all in the reddening sun she was a vision too fair for my strength.
'Jasper,' she said quietly, but much excited and trembling, and looking at me very fixedly, 'there is but one way, and the Lord has shown it me. I must go away from here, from him, and take little Fulke away, or he and I and all will be lost for ever. Jasper, you must take us away.'
I started, horror-stricken, to hear from her sweet mouth the very words which the devil had set on my own lips and which I had striven so hard to keep back. I knew then I could not resist much longer. It seemed to me that I must be speaking to a fiend who had taken her angel shape, and my courage for so hopeless a battle began to fail me.
'Brother,' it said, coming towards me, 'you will not fail me. Save me and my boy, your own godson, from perdition. Take me to where he is fostering, and thence whither you will. I care not, so long as I am away from this great trial.'
Her form was close to me; what seemed her little white hands were upon me; two wistful brown eyes like hers were looking up in my face in an agony of pleading. What could I do, what could I do? I had taken the soft form in my arms before I knew and passionately kissed the sweet upturned face. God forgive me for it, when His will is! I was tempted more than I could bear.
CHAPTER XIII
The ways were very foundrous, and night closed in upon us while we were still on our flight. Ere Harry had returned we had departed and were making for the farm to which little Fulke had been sent with his foster-mother. It was a good distance from Ashtead, being the farthest part of Harry's estate inland, and detached from the rest by a large space. For that reason it had been chosen by him for his boy, that he might be as far as possible away from the marshes, which were held to be pestilent in the spring.
Mrs. Waldyve was riding pillion behind me. A sort of calm had settled upon us with the night, and I picked my way as well as I could through the mud, content to feel her soft arm about me, and know that it was her sweet form that leaned upon me.
Darker and darker gathered the night, and deeper grew the mire. I could no longer see where my horse trod, and had to leave him with loosened rein to find his way as best he could. I think the unwonted weight upon his back must have wearied him, for all at once he stumbled, and we found him stuck up to the girths in a slough.