"Oh, trust me. I give my word. So he came to help you run away from being married to this old knight?"
"Yes. You know there's no love lost betwixt Uncle Bartlemy and my father. But mine uncle hath doted upon me from the first, the more, perchance, because he hath no child of his own. And I think he loves me doubly, for the quarrel he has with my father."
"And so he had not the heart to refuse when you begged him to come and carry you away to his house," conjectured Ravenshaw.
"'Tis so. 'Twas the only way I could devise to escape the marriage. I thought, if all could be done by night, I might be concealed in mine uncle's house; and even if my father should think of going there to seek me, he could be put off with denials."
"But what would your uncle's wife have said to this?"
"Oh, Aunt Margaret is bitter against my father; she would delight to hoodwink him. The only doubt was how mine uncle might come and take me, without her knowing of his visit to London. For, of a truth, she would never consent to his setting foot inside London town; and there was no one else I dared trust to conduct me. And so we had it that Uncle Bartlemy should feign to go to Rochester, and then, on his way home, to have happened upon me in my flight."
"And so your aunt be none the wiser? Well, such folly deserves to be cozened—the folly of forbidding her husband coming to London."
"Oh," replied Mistress Millicent, blushing a little as she smiled, "my dear aunt is, in truth, as jealous as Sir Peregrine would have us believe his wives were. There is a lady in London that Uncle Bartlemy played servant to before he was married, and Aunt Margaret made him promise never to come within sight of the town."
"I marvel how you laid your plans with him, without discovery of your people or his."
"There was a carrier's man that goes betwixt London and Rochester, who used to come courting one of our maids. We passed letters privately by means of him, till he fell out with the maid, and now comes hither no more. The last word I had of my uncle was after that night. He told me of his mishap with the watch, and of his getting free—though he said not how. And he vowed he must leave me to my fate, for he would never venture for me again as he had done. So I was left without hope. When I recognised you to-day as my preserver that night, and remembered that the Holydays were my uncle's neighbours, I thought—mayhap—you might have some message from him; but, alas—!"