"Ay, mice!" she answered with a snap of her teeth--and she looked all over the little vixen she could be. "For what are we? What are we now? Still more, what are we if we leave the Duke to his enemies, leave him to be ruined and disgraced, leave him to pay the penalty, while you, the cause of all this, lie here--lie safe and snug? For shame, Dick! For shame!" she continued with such a thrill in her voice that the pigeons feeding behind her fluttered up in alarm, and two or three nuns looked out inquisitively.
I had my own thoughts and my own feelings about my lord, as he well knew in after years. I challenge any to say that I lacked either respect or affection for him. But a man's wits move more slowly than a woman's, and the news came on me suddenly. It was no great wonder if I could not in a moment stomach the prospect of returning to risk and jeopardy, to the turmoil from which I had been so long freed, and the hazards of a life and death struggle. In the political life of twenty years ago men carried their necks to market. Knowing that I might save the Duke and suffer in his place--the fate of many a poor dependant; or might be confronted with Smith; or brought face to face with Ferguson; or perish before I reached London in the net in which my lord's own feet were caught, I foresaw not one but a hundred dangers; and those such as no prudent man could be expected to regard with equanimity, or any but a harebrained girl would encounter with a light heart.
Still I desired to stand well with her; and that being so I confess that it was with relief I remembered my lameness; and named it to her. Passing over the harshness of her last words, "You are right," I said. "Something should be done. But for me it is impossible at present. I am lame, as you see."
"Lame?" she cried.
"More than lame," I answered--but there was that in her tone which bade me avoid her eyes. "A cripple, Mary."
"No, not a cripple," she answered.
"Yes," I said.
"No, Dick," she answered in a voice low, but so grave and firm that I winced. "Let us be frank for once. Not a cripple, but a coward."
"I never said I was a soldier," I answered.
"Nor I," she replied, wilfully misunderstanding me. "I said, a coward! And a coward I will not marry!"