“Don’t!” she cried. She put her hands to her ears. Then, seeing that she had wounded him, she dropped them and spoke more kindly. “Don’t let us make much of little, Mr. Basset. It was all natural enough. You don’t like Lord Audley——”
“I don’t.”
“And you did not understand that we had been terribly frightened, and had good reason to be grateful to him. I am sure that if you had known that, you would have behaved differently. There!” with a smile. “And now that I have made the amende for you, let us have breakfast. Here is your coffee.”
He knew that she was holding him off, and all his alarms of the night were quickened. Again and again had John Audley’s warning recurred to him and as often he had striven to reject it, but always in vain. And gradually, slowly, it had kindled his resolution, it had fired him to action. Now, the very modesty which had long kept him silent and withheld him from enterprise was changed—as so often happens with diffident man—into rashness. He was as anxious to put his fate to the test as he had before been unwilling.
Presently, “You will not need to tell your uncle about Lord Audley,” he said. “I’ve done it.”
“I hope you told him,” she answered gravely, “that we were indebted to Lord Audley for our safety.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Don’t say things like that!” she cried. “It is foolish. I have no doubt that in telling my uncle you meant to relieve me. You have helped me more than once in that way. But——”
“But this is a special occasion?”
She looked at him. “If you wish us to be friends——”