‘Dost thou send me,’ he asked her, ‘to be her bane? art thou so still and steadfast a hater?’
‘I send you not at all,’ she answered. ‘It is she that calls. Remember that against the time when you have need to remember it.’
He caught her up and kissed her repeatedly. ‘Sit thou still, Jeannie, and watch,’ says he; ‘keep my house and stuff, and have a prayer on thy lips for me. Never doubt me, my dear. Doubt all the world to come, but doubt not me.’
She said, ‘I am very sure of you—both of what you will do, and what you will not do.’
He kissed her again, and left her. She did not come out to see him ride away.
Cantering on grass through the hot starry night, he called Des-Essars to his side and questioned him closely about the letter. How did she write it? What did she say? Who was by?
‘My lord,’ said Baptist, ‘I myself was by. No other at all. She bade me take it straight to your lordship, surely and secretly. She wrote it herself and sealed it with the ring on her forefinger. But she wrote nothing until she had washed her hands.’
‘Why, my lad,’ says he, ‘were her hands so foul?’
‘My lord, they were the fairest, whitest hands in the world. But she washed them many times, until, as she said, they smelt of roses, and not of Scotland.’
‘The plot thickens, God strike me! What else, boy?’