The moon had cleared the clouds now.
It was to be just such a night—save for the frost and wind—as that fateful one on which Ralph and Rotha walked together from the Red Lion. How happy that night had seemed to her then to be—happy, at least, until the end! She had even sung under the moonlight. But her songs had been truer than she knew—terribly, horribly true.
One lonely foot sounds on the keep,
And that's the warder's tread.
Step by step Rotha retraced every incident of that night's walk; every word of Ralph's and every tone.
He had told her that her father was innocent, and that he knew it was so.
He had asked her if she did not love her father, and she had said, “Better than all the world.”
Had that been true, quite true? Rotha stopped and plucked at a bough in the fence.
When she had asked him the cause of his sadness, when she had hinted that perhaps he was keeping something behind which might yet take all the joy out of the glad news that he gave her—what, then, had he said? He had told her there was nothing to come that need mar her happiness or disturb her love. Had that also been true, quite true? No, no, no, neither had been true; but the falsehood had been hers.
She loved her father, yes; but not, no, not better than all the world. And what had come after had marred her happiness and disturbed her love. Where lay her love—where?
Rotha stopped again, and as though to catch her breath. Nature within her seemed at war with itself. It was struggling to tear away a mask that hid its own face. That mask must soon be plucked aside.