She did not answer. She stood a moment, then to my surprise she turned away without a word, and merely commanding me by a gesture of the hand not to follow, walked slowly away. I watched her cross the deck and pass through the doorway into the deck-house. She did not once turn her face, and my only fear was that she was ill; more seriously ill, perhaps, than she had acknowledged.
CHAPTER VIII.
[A HOUSE OF PEACE.]
As the day went on, therefore, I looked eagerly for Mistress Anne's return, but she appeared no more, though I maintained a close watch on the cabin-door. All the afternoon, too, the Duchess kept away from me, and I feared that I had seriously offended her; so that it was with no very pleasant anticipations that, going into that part of the deck-house which served us for a common room, to see if the evening meal was set, I found only the Duchess and Master Bertie prepared to sit down to it. I suppose that something of my feeling was expressed in my face, for while I was yet half-way between door and table, my lady gave way to a peal of merriment.
"Come, sit down, and do not be afraid!" she cried pleasantly, her gray eyes still full of laughter. "I vow the lad thinks I shall eat him. Nay, when all is said and done, I like you the better, Sir Knight Errant, for your scruples. I see that you are determined to act up to your name. But that reminds me," she added in a more serious vein. "We have been frank with you. You must be equally frank with us. What are we to call you, pray?"
I looked down at my plate and felt my face grow scarlet. The wound which the discovery of my father's treachery had dealt me had begun to heal. In the action, the movement, the adventure of the last fortnight, I had well-nigh lost sight of the blot on my escutcheon, of the shame which had driven me from home. But the question, "What are we to call you?" revived the smart, and revived it with an added pang. It had been very well, in theory, to proudly discard my old name. It was painful, in practice, to be unable to answer the Duchess, "I am a Cludde of Coton, nephew to Sir Anthony, formerly esquire of the body to King Henry. I am no unworthy follower and associate even for you," and to have instead to reply, "I have no name. I am nobody. I have all to make and win." Yet this was my ill-fortune.
Her woman's eye saw my trouble as I hesitated, confused and doubting what I should reply. "Come!" she said good-naturedly, trying to reassure me. "You are of gentle birth. Of that we feel sure."
I shook my head. "Nay, I am of no birth, madam," I answered hurriedly. "I have no name, or at any rate no name that I can be proud of. Call me--call me, if it please you, Francis Carey."
"It is a good name," quoth Master Bertie, pausing with his knife suspended in the air. "A right good Protestant name!"
"But I have no claim to it," I rejoined, mere and more hurt. "I have all to make. I am a new man. Yet do not fear!" I added quickly, as I saw what I took to be a cloud of doubt cross my lady's face. "I will follow you no less faithfully for that!"