It was still daylight; the regular household supper was taken early in those times, and English days are long in May. Yet an early star or two showed themselves in the clear sky. The scent of the pinks and apple-blossoms was in the air.
"A sweet night toward," said the goldsmith, manifesting an inclination to remain with his guest in the garden. But this was what Ravenshaw did not desire. The captain, therefore, as soon as he had lighted his pipe, took Master Etheridge's arm so as to have the greater pretext for walking close to him, and blew such volumes of smoke in the poor man's direction that, for the sake of his eyes and nostrils, being no "tobacconist," he was soon glad to make excuse for returning into the house, and to hasten back, coughing and blinking.
"If she is a woman," mused the captain, left alone, "she will come to hear what I may tell her. She has been on pins and needles. By this light, what a piece of chance!—that this maid should be that one! What shall I say to her? I must open upon the matter of that night. Tut, has she not yet observed I am alone here now? Or has she not the freedom of the house? or the wit to devise means of coming hither? Well, I will give her the time of this pipeful. What a sweet evening!"
But the sweetness of the evening made him only sigh uneasily, and feel more out of sorts with himself. Several minutes passed, and he was thinking he might have to resort to some keen stroke of wit to get private speech with her, after all; when suddenly she appeared, with ghostlike swiftness, at the corner where the passage along the kitchen wing gave into the garden. He was, at the moment, scarce ten feet from that spot.
She was blushing and perturbed. She cast a look up at the dining-room window, then glanced at him, and, instantly dropping her eyes, sped over the turf to the farther side of the apple-tree. He quickly followed her; and when, thereupon, they stood together, the tree screened them from the house.
Without looking at him, and tremblingly plucking the apple-blossoms to hide her confusion, she said, quickly:
"Sir, I thank you for what you did that night. You will not tell them, will you?"
He thought that, by promising unconditionally, he should lose a possible means of controlling her actions; so he must, for the moment, evade.
"Then they know not?" he queried.
"Nay; I got in, and to my chamber, without waking any one."