"I thought I could help you."
"How?"
"Judge Marriott had once made me a promise that if I asked him he would contrive the escape of anyone I—anyone I was interested in."
"Such a man would not make a promise for nothing."
"No."
"What was his reward to be?"
"I hoped he would let me off," Barbara said, covering her face with her hands, "but he wanted me to marry him. That would have been his price, and I should have paid it."
"Oh, my dear, don't you know I would rather have died a score of deaths?"
"And then, when you came to Dorchester?" she asked. She did not look at him; her head was lowered and her hands clasped in her lap again.
"We tried to find you, Martin and Fellowes and I."