“It is not my wish to overstate it; yet I leave you to imagine what the risk may be.”
“It is a good cause,” said she, thinking of the poor, deluded, humble folk that followed Monmouth's banner, whom Blake's fine action was to rescue from impending ruin and annihilation, “and surely Heaven will be on your side.”
“We must prevail,” cried Blake with kindling eye, and you had thought him a fanatic, not a miserable earner of blood-money. “We must prevail, though some of us may pay dearly for the victory. I have a foreboding...” He paused, sighed, then laughed and flung back his head, as if throwing off some weight that had oppressed him.
It was admirably played; Nick Trenchard, had he observed it, might have envied the performance; and it took effect with her, this adding of a prospective martyr's crown to the hero's raiment he had earlier donned. It was a master-touch worthy of one who was deeply learned—from the school of foul experience—in the secret ways that lead to a woman's favour. In a pursuit of this kind there was no subterfuge too mean, no treachery too base for Sir Rowland Blake.
“Will you walk, mistress?” he said, and she, feeling that it were an unkindness not to do his will, assented gravely. They moved down the sloping lawn, side by side, Sir Rowland leaning on his cane, bareheaded, his feathered hat tucked under his arm. Before them the river's smooth expanse, swollen and yellow with the recent rains, glowed like a sheet of copper, so that it blurred the sight to look upon it long.
A few steps they took with no word uttered, then Sir Rowland spoke. “With this foreboding that is on me,” said he, “I could not go without seeing you, without saying something that I may never have another chance of saying; something that—who knows?—but for the emprise to which I am now wedded you had never heard from me.”
He shot her a furtive, sidelong glance from under his heavy, beetling brows, and now, indeed, he observed a change ripple over the composure of her face like a sudden breeze across a sheet of water. The deep lace collar at her throat rose and fell, and her fingers toyed nervously with a ribbon of her grey bodice. She recovered in an instant, and threw up entrenchments against the attack she saw he was about to make.
“You exaggerate, I trust,” said she. “Your forebodings will be proved groundless. You will return safe and sound from this venture, as indeed I hope you may.”
That was his cue. “You hope it?” he cried, arresting his step, turning, and imprisoning her left hand in his right. “You hope it? Ah, if you hope for my return, return I will; but unless I know that you will have some welcome for me such as I desire from you, I think...” his voice quivered cleverly, “I think, perhaps, it were well if... if my forebodings were not as groundless as you say they are. Tell me, Ruth...”
But she interrupted him. It was high time, she thought. Her face he saw was flushed, her eyes had hardened somewhat. Calmly she disengaged her hand.