“Well, good-morning, my man, and many thanks,” says Léonie, as she begins to move her horse away. She is surprised when the next moment the porter comes up alongside her.
“Beg pardon, sir, no offence, sir, but be you a friend of the duke?”
Léonie is perplexed, but she answers evasively, “What do you want to know that for, my man?”
“Because,” answers the honest fellow with an eager look in his eyes, “because, sir, I’ve been reading all about how the Government is a-hunting of him and that great man Mr. Hector D’Estrange. Least they say Mr. D’Estrange is a woman. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I don’t see what it matters whether Mr. D’Estrange is a man or a woman, sir. He’s the people’s friend, sir; he wants to help us poor folk. There is no humbug about him, sir, and we love him for that, we do. If you know them, can you tell me if they are safe, sir? Forgive a poor fellow asking this, sir—but oh! I’d die for them, I would, sir!”
The blood rushes to Léonie’s face. What is it that brings it there? Perhaps a vague, undefined feeling of shame that she should be bent on an errand so degrading with the true words of the honest working man ringing in her ears.
“Yes, they are safe,” she says hurriedly. “Here, take this, my man.”
She throws him another shilling, and as he stoops to pick it up, she puts her horse into a quick trot, and widens the distance between herself and her interlocutor. What does Léonie know of goodness, gratitude, or any high and noble virtue? In that young, cold, calculating heart of hers, what room is there for devotion or love? She wonders, as she rides along, why that man’s words brought that flush to her face, and what that strange feeling was that made her heart beat and her pulse throb. She puts it down to a fear that her object and mission might be recognised.
“I’m getting nervous, I believe,” she laughs to herself. “That will never do. Mr. Trackem has always told me to be cool and self-possessed. What a fool I was to let that man see he had flustered me! Léonie, you are an idiot!”
She tightens her horse’s rein, and just touches him lightly with her heels as she speaks, and the animal breaks into a canter. Nero gallops happily by her side. The dog is enjoying his outing in the country. Two miles at this pace is quickly got over, but Léonie draws rein as she reaches the cross-roads. To the left stands a signboard, and “Aldershot” is written on it.
“Fifty yards further on,” mutters the girl as she trots forward. The porter’s directions are very exact; the wooden gate is before her.