“Part!” she cried in sharp terror, and those wide black eyes of hers quickly deserted the blank panes to fall upon him. She had never anticipated such an outcome of their quarrel as this, nor dreamed that it was easily possible for him to circumvent all her plans by withdrawing himself from her company. Instantly the dread consequences of such a determination on his part—and she had had a glimpse of his resoluteness—loomed up before her, every little disagreement between them sinking into nothingness before this fearful alternative. She dared not lose sight of him until her mission was accomplished, or her brother’s life and her country’s ruin paid the penalty of her foolishness. She must cast herself at his feet, if necessary, to retain him, and here she had jeopardized everything in an outburst of temper. A chilling fear crept into her heart that any complacency she might show him would be too late. Secretly she had rather admired his sturdy independence and pride of race, comparing it with her own vacillating purpose, ready one moment to forgive and the next to ban; but now this lofty self-respect might prove her undoing.
“I fear I overrated my power of serving you,” he continued, “and I forgot for the moment how slight was my acquaintance with your family. Manchester, and not Oxford, is my destination, and I shall make for that town to-morrow before you are astir. The country is not nearly so disturbed as I expected to find it, and the roads are perfectly safe; indeed you know the route better than I. This pass is a most potent document and will open every gate. I leave it with you.” He placed the paper on the table before her. “If I might venture to counsel you, I should advise you not to take it into Oxford unless you have some satisfactory plea to account for its possession.”
“Have you had anything to eat since you came into York?” Her voice was as sweet as the note of a nightingale.
“No,” said Armstrong with a laugh. “I had forgotten about that; a most unusual trick of memory.”
“I was too angry with you at the wayside inn, and I could not touch a morsel, so I thus came famished into York. John, see if Mr. Armstrong’s meal is prepared, and ask them to serve it here. I think you Scottish people possess a proverb that it is unfair, or something like that, to speak with a hungry man.”
“Yes, many of our sayings pertain to eating. We are an uncouth folk, I fear.”
“Indeed you are far from uncouth to-night, Mr. Armstrong. I thought it was we ladies who hurried to the mercers when we came to town, but you lost no time in the delightful quest. That was why I was so deeply offended with you when you came in. You are most ungallant not to have invited me to go with you. I could not have visited shops alone.”
“You had no need to visit the shops. Nothing they sell could improve you.”
“Am I so hopeless as that?” said the girl, with the sigh of the accomplished coquette, leaning back in her chair and entrancing him with her eyes.
Armstrong blushed to the roots of his flaxen hair and stammered,—“I——I meant you are perfect as it is.”