'Has your worship any use for me ere I go?' he said, very respectfully, and drawn up stiffly to his full height.
I could have easily embraced the grim soldier for that salute and those words. In the depth of my degradation, when I so loathed myself that I felt I should never dare to look an honest man in the face again, I found this steadfast soul did not wholly despise me. It seemed to me he was a sign sent, I cannot say from God, for God was no more to me now, but sent by some mysterious power of good that by hazard I had conjured, to bid me hope my vow would be fulfilled.
'Is your horse strong enough to go back to Ashtead?' said I.
'Yes, your worship,' he answered; 'and as far again in a good cause.'
'Then set the pillion saddle on him,' said I. The Sergeant's childlike look grew very apparent and smiling as I spoke. I thought at first he was about to seize my hand, but he restrained himself and only rigidly saluted as he went to do my bidding. So, hopefully and with hardened heart, I went back to the guest chamber of the inn.
She had left the place where I had seen her last, and was sitting in the window, as though she had gone there to look after Harry or me, I knew not which. How beautiful she shone in the moonlight! I can think of it quietly now. The silver flood fell full upon her, and illumined her lovely face and form with so heavenly a radiance in the dark chamber that she seemed to me like some poor angel, weary of worship, who had strayed from heaven. It was as though the eye of some great spirit far away was turned upon her to draw her back to the realms she had left; as though she saw the golden gate whence she came, and, weighed down by the thick and cloying vapours of earth, knew not how to take wing back to the life she had loved and lost.
'Will you go back to-night,' said I, 'or wait for the morning?'
She started then from her reverie, and turned on me her sweet brown eyes, so wistfully and full of reproach as almost to undo me.
'Must we go back, Jasper?' she said at last, so submissively and in such beseeching tones that my head swam and my breath came thick. Many a struggle I have had in my changeful life, but never one like that. It was only my new guardian that won the strife for me. I clapped my hand to Harry's rapier, and, pressing it mighty hard, found strength to say firmly, 'Yes!'
I think she saw what I did, for she stood up with that stony calm which to me is far more terrible than the wildest passion. Once she pressed her little white hands to her eyes, and then drew them slowly away, while I stood watching and waiting for my answer.