"Loveday, listen to me. Will you help to save your mistress from the fate of your husband?"
The words penetrated to my benumbed brain, and found an answer there. I turned my face inquiringly toward her. She repeated her question, with a difference.
"Will you risk your life to save your mistress from the fate of your husband?"
"Yes!" I answered, rousing myself all at once. "What is life to me?"
"A means whereby you may serve God and his church," answered Mistress Curtis, solemnly. "Can you collect your wits and listen to me?"
I felt once more come over me that strange feeling of peace and strength which had been given me before.
"I will do any thing for my mistress," I said.
"Then listen. You know Gardiner is our lady's implacable enemy. Already he threatens her with a strict examination, which can have but one end, for she will never deny her faith. Master Batie hath already gone abroad, leaving us instructions what to do. This very night, if at all, my lady must make her escape to meet her husband, at a little town in the Dutchy of Cleves. You can be of the greatest use to us, as you can speak both Dutch and Latin, and perhaps, French also—"
"Yes," I answered. "I can speak French well, and can make a shift to express myself in Spanish, if need." (So I could, for having always a fancy for learning languages, I had picked up a little Spanish from a lady in Rotterdam.) "I see what you would have, and I am ready. Whom does my mistress take in her company?"
"Why, our two selves and John Symonds. Then we may depend upon you, my dear, faithful, afflicted child?"