“I suppose like all who learn their lesson in that school,” said Dorothy soberly enough, “he will pay for it?”
De Laprade looked at her gravely, and then took her hand in both of his. “It would be an idle affectation in me to pretend that I am ignorant of your meaning, but I think you are wronging me with an unjust thought. I am a gambler, it is true, and love the music of the dice, but your brother, heedless as he is, will not suffer at my hands. Were he not my kinsman who has given me shelter, he is the brother of Dorothy Carew.”
“I know you will forgive me,” said Dorothy contritely. “But if I know Jasper he will look to you for payment of your losses. And he is rich while you----”
“Am standing in my kingdom,” laughed De Laprade. “Do not trouble your mind about our play--´tis all for love.”
While this conversation had been going on, a little knot of officers were gathered on the bastion near Butcher´s Gate. Hard by was Alexander Poke, the gunner, loading a great gun carefully with Gervase Orme seated near watching the operation. The siege had already placed its mark on all of them: the daily horrors were not passing over them without leaving their traces. Anxious and depressed in mind and wasted in body, they were like men who had passed through a long vigil without hope. Their clothes hung loosely about them and were torn and frayed; and it was clear they had long since ceased to regard appearances and only looked to what was serviceable. They moved slowly and without enthusiasm, but on the faces of all of them was to be read the same hard and stubborn look, as of men who knowing the worst were determined to endure to the end. A month ago they might have listened to liberal terms of compromise; now they were determined there should be no surrender while a man remained alive.
Walker, with his snow-white head and stately presence, bore up under his anxiety with a higher spirit than many of the younger men, and as he stood in the centre of the little group, appeared to have suffered less than any other among them.
“I know not, gentlemen,” he had been saying, “what this missive means with which this barbarous soldier has favoured us, but this I know, that they cannot frighten us with a cartel of paper when they have failed to do so with their guns. For the threat of putting us to the sword and refusing quarter even to the women, that they may do when they have it in their power, but for the other--I think ´tis mere bravado spun out of the Frenchman´s brain. What say you, Colonel Mitchelburn?”
“I have served with De Rosen,” said Mitchelburn, “and know that he hath the heart to do this and more, and while it seems to us an act too base and cowardly for words, for him ´tis but an ordinary stratagem of war. To drive a few hundred wretched women and children under the walls to starve there, will not trouble the man who has seen the sack of fifty cities. But there are gallant gentlemen yonder, men of spirit and honour, who will never suffer this savage Russian to carry out his threat.”
“I know not that--I know not that. They will believe we cannot help but take them in, and how in Heaven´s name, can we do otherwise? We cannot stand here and see them starved before our eyes. It is not well to meet sorrow half way but at most there is not more than a fortnight´s food in the magazine and then”----