“I... I would not have you keep it,” she murmured. She heard his sharply indrawn breath, felt him leaning over her, and was filled with an unaccountable fear.
“Was it to tell me this you came?” he asked her, his voice reduced to a whisper.
“No... yes,” she answered, an agony in her mind, which groped for some means to keep him by her side until his danger should be overpast. That much she owed him in honour if in nothing else.
“No—yes?” he echoed, and he had drawn himself erect again. “What is't you mean, Ruth?”
“I mean that it was that, yet not quite only that.”
“Ah!” Disappointment vibrated faintly in his clamation. “What else?”
“I would have you abandon Monmouth's following,” she told him.
He stared a moment, moved away and round where he could confront her. The flush had now faded from her face. This he observed and the heave of her bosom in its low bodice. He knit his brows, perplexed. Here was surely more than at first might seem.
“Why so?” he asked.
“For your own safety's sake,” she answered him.