“I cannot tell you—I must not tell you,” she repeated again and again as the gentle arms of the woman were about her neck and a mother’s voice besought her to trust them. But she told them in the end, word by word, confessing all—Brandon’s danger, his presence in the city; Gatelet’s threat that he would betray him that very night. And when she had done, it was as though some great load of her life had been transferred suddenly to another’s shoulders, and must be borne, as a feather-weight, henceforth, by this giant Englishman, who had come out of the city’s night in the hour of her necessity.
Richard Watts heard the story, sentence by sentence, often taking her back a little way in the narrative; always ready with his word of sympathy and encouragement. A quick thinker, he grappled with the situation instantly. It was not her friend that he was called upon to save, but his own—the man he had left at Wörth; the man whose father he had known at Frankfort twenty years ago.
“It was like the mad scamp to come here,” he said, when she told him of Brandon’s first visit; “he shouldn’t have done it. The news would have waited. But war breeds folly. We must save him from that folly, little lady. Do you think that the scoundrel down yonder has told anyone else?”
She shook her head, smiling through her tears.
“I have been too frightened to think, Mr. Watts.”
“Of course you have. It was his game to frighten you. I don’t suppose he’s taken anyone into partnership, all the same. That wouldn’t suit him. But he’ll tell all he knows about Brandon now, be sure of it. And we haven’t much time to lose, my child.”
She could see that he was very thoughtful. For a little while she did not venture to speak to him, as he paced the room silently, often taking up his hat, and as often setting it down again. She knew that the danger of that which he undertook was not hidden from him.
“If anything should happen to you!” she exclaimed suddenly.
“To me, young lady. Oh, don’t bother your head about that. I’m an Englishman; they won’t hurt me.”
“And you think that you can save Brandon?”