"It was not till ruin stared me in the face, and I knew not which way to turn, that I took to the 'road'--as many a broken-down spendthrift of as good birth as I has done before me. But it is some slight salve to my conscience to know that I have never eased any man of his purse who was not well able to bear the loss, that I have never despoiled one of the opposite sex, and that I have never failed to distribute among the poor more than half of all I have taken from the rich."
He ceased, and for some moments neither of them broke the silence. His eyes had been fixed on the window as he told his tale, and he still kept them turned away from his companion. He was now softly tapping his teeth with the nails of one hand.
It was wrong, it was very wrong, and Nell admitted it to be such, but, do what she would, she could not blame him. The man, by his own admission, was a highwayman, a "minion of the moon"; of course the fact had long been known to her, but it had never been so clearly brought home to her before to-day, and yet all she could do was to pity him! Oh, it was shameful! And besides, we all know how close pity is akin to something else. She tried to despise herself, and to feel enraged with herself, but could not.
But they could not sit mum forever. It was her turn to speak. Something she must say--but what?
"The dangers and perils of the kind of life you have been speaking of are many and great." Her words faltered a little in her own despite. "Why not give it up, Mr. Dare? Why not try to find some other and more reputable way of making a living? How I wish you would! How I wish----"
"Pardon me, Miss Baynard, but I have given it up." He spoke with a certain abruptness, and as he did so he turned his black eyes full upon her. "Captain Nightshade's last adventure on the road was the one in which you yourself were so singularly mixed up. From that night he resolved to turn over a fresh leaf. For one short hour he had come under an influence powerful enough and sweet enough to make a new man of him. The resolve then made has never been broken."
He spoke with an emphasis which left no room for mistake as to his meaning. Nell's eyes sank before the half-veiled passion which had suddenly leapt to life in his. Face and throat flushed a lovely color. It was all she could do not to betray that she was a-tremble in every limb.
"I am very, very glad, Mr. Dare, to hear that you have seen your way to a changed mode of life." Was it Miss Baynard who spoke or some one else? What was this strange new feeling of timidity, almost of shrinking, which had seized upon her? She might have been the veriest bread-and-butter miss fresh from school. Never had she despised herself more heartily than at that moment.
"I have told you, Miss Baynard, that I left London a broken man," resumed Dare after a pause. "I had, however, my mother's jewelry still untouched, but, no other resource being now left me, I was compelled to let it go. A little later the sum of four hundred pounds reached me anonymously, with a letter stating that it was 'conscience money' returned by a dying man, it having been won from my father twenty years before by cheating at cards. That it came as a veritable godsend I need hardly tell you."
"And yet, if I would have let you, you would still have gone on paying for Evan's maintenance."