“You have utterly mistaken me. I am not a spy to be bought by the highest bidder. Nothing shall prevent me from warning the Prince.”
She flared into a kind of contemptuous despair. “The Prince! What is he to ye?”
“A man—a gentleman—you cannot say so much for Berwick—or any of his crew.”
“In your eyes a usurper,” she cried, striving to goad him, “a foreign usurper—”
“Madam—he said to me—‘there are some things I will not do’—and I say the same to you now—I will not let that man be murdered.”
She was silent again as if she had nothing to oppose against his resolution; she gazed in a strange terrified manner at his calm, soft face, his melancholy hazel eyes and the color of excitement leaped into her cheeks to pale and leaped thither again.
“We must be near the river,” he said, and put out his hand to lift the blind.
But she flung out her arm and intercepted him.
“Nay—not yet—not yet—and keep the night shut out. Oh, God, the night!” The next second she was on her knees on the floor of the coach.
“For pity—for God’s sake—” she cried passionately. “Ye dinna ken what it means to me—”