He smiled gloomily.
“Yes—a rare thing, you will say to find a lawyer and a conspirator in one—”
“Oh, no,” said Delia, “but I had rather, sir, you had been a soldier.”
“I have been that, too,” he answered. “I’ve trailed a pike in France and Holland with fine scum for company—” he turned round on her suddenly—“that must have been before you were born, Miss Delia.”
She gave a start of surprise; he seemed a young man; he read her thought and smiled:
“I am six and thirty; you, I think, not above eighteen; my soldiering was more than twenty years ago—a dead thing!—but you have not answered me—are you deeply in this plot—to assassinate the Prince?”
“I have not heard of it,” she answered. “They do not tell me everything—yet I can answer for Mr. Caryl at least that he would not stain his cause with murder.”
He frowned.
“Is he your lover?”
“No,” her brown eyes lifted steadily. “I have no lover.”