“I hope to come back,” I went on, “and rejoin you. But if I shouldn’t for any reason,”—with careful vagueness,—“you must stay here, barricaded, till they are gone. Then Miss Falconer can drive her car to the nearest town and bring back help for you. You see, it will be entirely simple, either way.”
The girl, very white now, took a swift step toward me.
“Simple?” she cried. “They will kill you! They hate you, Mr. Bayne, and they are four to one. You mustn’t go.”
But the duke’s hand was on her arm.
“My dear,” he said, “he has reason. This friend of yours, I perceive, is a gallant gentleman. Believe me, if I had strength to stand, he would not go alone.”
He held out the papers to me, and I took them. Then we clasped hands, the Firefly and I.
“Bonne chance, Monsieur,” he bade me with the pressure.
“Good luck and good-bye,” I answered. “Miss Falconer, will you come to the door?”
She took up the candle and came forward to light me, and we went in silence through the room of the squires and through the ante-chamber and into the room of the guards. She walked close beside me; her eyes shone wet; her lips trembled. There were things I would have given the world to say, but I suppressed them. To the very end, I had resolved, I would play fair. We were at the outer door.
“Good-by, Miss Falconer,” I said, halting. “You mustn’t worry; everything is going to turn out splendidly, I am sure. Only, now that we have the papers, it ends our little adventure, doesn’t it? So before I go I want to thank you for our day together. It has been wonderful. There never was another like it. I shall always be thankful for it, no matter what I have to pay.”