A Minion of the Moon: A Romance of the King's Highway

by T. W. Speight

Finding Mr. McManus as usual in his shop, Dare at once challenged him with being the tale-bearer. It was an accusation he made no attempt to rebut; but that in saying what he had to Miss Baynard he had been actuated by any feeling of ill-will towards Dare was too absurd a notion to be entertained for one moment. However, the mischief was done and could not be undone, and with all his faults Dare was not the man to vent his annoyance on so helpless an object as the old tobacconist.

But Miss Baynard had spoken as if there were more reasons than one for the decision she had arrived at. Might not another, and perhaps the chief one, lie in the fact that in him she had recognized the man who had been mixed up with herself in a certain memorable adventure, and who, when asked his name, had told her that he was none other than the notorious "Captain Nightshade"? It was a recognition he had not counted on, being unaware how incautiously he had afforded her the opportunity of scanning his features by the light of the serving-man's candle at the door of Rockmount. But that she had recognized him was an indisputable fact. Was it, then, to be wondered at that she should refuse in such positive terms to permit him any longer to defray young Evan's expenses with money which she doubtless regarded as the proceeds of robbery on the King's highway?

No, he felt bound to admit that it was not to be wondered at, and that, in point of fact, no other course was open to her. And yet, knowing him now to be that which he had told her he was, she had parted from him with a cordiality in which he felt assured there was no arrière-pensée. She had given him her hand frankly, and in her beautiful eyes he had read nothing but kindliness, with just a hint of sadness, or so he fancied, shining through it. And then, what had her last words to him been? "Let us not say good-bye, but au revoir." And this to the man who had confessed to being Captain Nightshade!

But to attempt to follow the turnings and twistings of that incomprehensible thing, a woman's mind, was what he made no pretensions to doing. It was enough for him that her own lips had said au revoir; and that a propitious fate in its own good time would bring them together again he did not permit himself to doubt.

Dare had had no thought or expectation of finding Miss Baynard at Lawn Cottage; he had not even known that she was in town; consequently the meeting was as great a surprise to him as it was to her. But what he did know, and had known all along, was that she and the soi-disant "Mr. Jack Prentice" were one and the same person. So piqued had his curiosity been by the adventure which had brought them together after such a strange fashion, that after her departure from Rockmount he had caused a watch to be set upon her movements till she had been traced back to Stanbrook. That she should prove to be the cousin of his dead friend, Dick Cortelyon, was merely one of those coincidences such as people who habitually keep their eyes open can see happening around them every day.

Dare had been quite right in his surmise as to the reasons which had actuated Nell in her refusal to allow him to contribute any longer, even in part, towards the cost of Evan's maintenance. The fact that he was a ruined man would of itself have been argument sufficient for the step she had decided upon taking. But when, in addition, she had to face the question, and it was one she could not shirk, "From what source is the money derived which is remitted every quarter-day to Mrs. Mardin?" she felt that no answer was needed from her. It was a question which answered itself. And this state of things had been going on for she knew not how long! Not another day must it last.

She had only been a couple of days back at Stanbrook when a small packet reached her through the post. It bore the London postmark, and was addressed in a writing wholly strange to her. She opened it, not without curiosity, to find that all it contained was the mask worn by her on a certain never-to-be-forgotten occasion. She had been unable to find it when, after reaching home, she proceeded to replace Dick's habiliments in the closet whence she had disinterred them. To the best of her belief she had inadvertently left it behind her in the bedroom at Rockmount, but it was a point as to which she could not be positive. Anyhow, here it was, sent back to her by an unknown hand, and her receipt of it in such fashion raised more than one perplexing question.

But supposing she was in error in thinking she had left the mask at Rockmount? In that case only one conclusion was open to her--that it was not Mr. Ellerslie, but Mr. Dare, who had returned it. One or the other of them it must be. If Mr. Dare were the sender of it, how woefully in error she must have been in assuming that he had not recognized her when they met accidentally at Lawn Cottage! And yet, by not so much as the flicker of an eyelid had he betrayed any knowledge, or even suspicion, of their ever having met before! If he did recognize her on that occasion, then of course her secret--the secret of her sex--was equally in his keeping. Perhaps he had known or guessed it from the first! Had he not, when she reeled and all but swooned in the saddle, caught her in his arms? and had she not, with wandering senses, lain for a little while--a very little while--in his embrace! Was it then he made the discovery, supposing it to have been made at all?

Hardly had she asked herself the question before a delicious thrill went through her from crown to foot, and all the pulses of her being began to palpitate with a strange, new, sweet life, far sweeter than anything she had hitherto known. She felt as a chrysalis may feel when it bursts its husk and first spreads its wings to the sun.

She sat for some little time, her face hidden in her hands, although she was alone, and her veins aglow with something that almost frightened her. Then on a sudden her mood changed: she sprang to her feet, and with clenched hands and hard-set face took to pacing her room from end to end, doing silent battle with herself meanwhile. Never had she been so assailed before, and she brought all the forces of her womanly pride to bear on the insidious foe that was undermining her outworks one by one. She had deemed herself invulnerable; she had, as it were, set herself on a pedestal as a being apart, whom the one great weakness of her sex--for such it seemed to her--could never touch. And now nature was beginning to revenge itself by proving to her that she was no stronger in some ways than the weakest of her weak sisters. But she would not yield, she would not give way, she told herself again and again with a sort of fierce despair, while conscious all the while that one bastion after another was crumbling before the enemy's assaults. "Shall not a woman remain mistress of her own fate?" she cried despairingly.