“I cannot tell you,” Henrietta repeated more firmly.
Mr. Hornyold stared. He was growing angry, for he was not accustomed to be set at naught. After their fashion they all stared.
“Come, come, my dear,” the runner remonstrated smoothly. “If you don’t tell us, we shall think there’s more behind.”
She did not answer.
“And that being so, it’s only a matter of time to learn what it is,” the runner continued cunningly. “Tell us now and save time, because we are sure to get to know. Young women as pretty as you are not hard to trace.”
But she shook her head. And the face Bishop called pretty was stubborn. The group by the door, marking for future gossip every particular of her appearance, the stuff of her riding-habit, the fineness of her linen, the set of her head, made certain that she was no common trollope. They wondered what would happen to her, and hoped, the more tender-hearted, that there would be no scene, and no hysterics to end it.
The clerk raised his pen in the air. “Understand,” he said, “you will be remanded to Appleby gaol—it’s no very comfortable place, I can tell you—and later, you will be brought up again and committed, I’ve very little doubt, to take your trial on these charges. If the principal offender be taken, as he is likely to be taken before the day is out, you’ll be tried with him. But it is not necessary. Now do you understand?” he continued, speaking slowly. “And are you still determined to give no evidence—showing how you came to be with this man?”
Henrietta’s eyes were full of trouble. She shivered.
“Where shall I be tried?” she muttered in an unsteady voice.
“Appleby,” the clerk said curtly. “Or in His Majesty’s Bench at Westminster! Now think, before it is too late.”