“I can perceive that without your assistance,” answered the proud daughter of Sir Marmaduke—who perhaps would not have deigned a reply, had she not been piqued by the tone of the interrogator.
“You expected to find him, didn’t you?”
Marion hesitated to make reply.
“Of course you did; else why should you have come here? You intended to set him free; but you’re too late Mistress Wade. Master Holtspur has friends who think as much of him as you—perhaps more. One of them, you see, has been before you?”
“You mean yourself?”
Marion was constrained to put this question, by a thought that had suddenly occurred to her. She remembered the words of the sentry, who had spoken of “a girl having been sent by a lady.”
After all, was Bet Dancey only a messenger? And was there a real rival—one of her own rank—in the back ground?
Such a belief would to some extent have been consolatory to the heart of the questioner. But even this slight hope was crushed, by the reply to her interrogatory.
“A strange question that, Mistress Marion Wade? You see me here? You see I have risked my life to save his? Do you think I would do that for another? No—not for the queen herself—who I’ve heard likes him as much, as either you or me?”
“There’s not much risk,” replied Marion becoming irritated in spite of herself, at the insolent tone of her rustic rival. “To you I should think, not much risk of anything.”