“I think,” she said, “that you yourself fight not so badly. Oh! why was I not a man that I might strike for religion and liberty? it is a miserable thing to be a woman in times like these.”
“I hope I am not a coward,” Gervase answered, “but I have already seen enough of warfare to dislike my trade, and would never fight if it were possible to avoid it. But fight we must for our rights and liberties and,” he added, after a pause, “in defence of those we love.”
“And,” she said, smiling, “is it for these last that you are fighting? But I have no right to ask you that, though I have been told that men say love is out of fashion. Indeed I think that it is no longer in vogue.”
“I care not for fashion in these things, but I have begun to think that there might be such loving as would make life a royal thing to live. I mean not love that asks to be loved in return, though I should like that too, but a love that fills the heart with great and splendid thoughts, and raises it above contemptible and base designs; the love I mean is wholly pure and unselfish and lifts the lover above himself. I know not whether you know the lines of that sonnet--”
“I think,” she said smiling, “we will change the subject. It seems to me that you are far too romantic to conduct a young and unprotected damsel on a dangerous journey like this. Your grim Captain Macpherson were a far fitter and more becoming companion--he would not breathe out his aspirations in rhyme, or relieve his love-laden soul in a ballad. Heigho! I shall never understand you men. But now tell me about your journey from Londonderry, and how it came about that you were wounded?”
And thereupon Gervase proceeded to relate the story of his ride by night and the skirmish on the road, passing lightly over such incidents as might be unfitting for a woman´s ear to listen to.
But when he mentioned the name of De Laprade she stopped him. “And you have met my cousin Victor, for it can be no other? I had not heard that he had come to Ireland.”
“I mean the Vicomte de Laprade. He is not much older than myself, with a slight lisp, and very fair for a Frenchman.”
“Yes, that is he. You do not know that he is in some sort my cousin, my mother having been of his family. He was in London when I was a girl living with my aunt, and he would come to visit us whenever he could tear himself away from the cards and the festivities of Whitehall. Poor Victor! he was a sad rake in those days, and I fear he would never have come to Ireland had he not run through his fortune.”
“He hinted, indeed, at something of that sort,” said Gervase, “but he is a gallant fellow, and one cannot but like him. He hath done a great deal for me.”