“If Mistress Alison will accept my poor protection as far as her father’s house—” says Anthony, coming forward. But half-a-dozen paces away he stopped, frightened, I think, by the look she gave him.
“Liar!” she said, and looked him up and down ere she turned away. She came up to me and laid her hand on my arm, “I am going with you,” she says in a low voice. “I am afraid—that man frightens me. What is it they will do to you, Richard?”
“Shoot me, I expect, cousin,” says I. There was naught to be gained by keeping the truth from her.
She went over to the officer. “Sir,” says she, “you will make me your debtor if you will carry me to Pomfret with you. I have a mind to go there,” she says, looking hard at him.
The man looked from her to Anthony. “Why, madam,” says he, “sure you are free to do what you please, and I should feel it an honour to give you any assistance, but——”
“You are to go with me to your father’s, cousin,” says Anthony, with a frown on his black face. “It was on these conditions only that I secured your liberty.”
But she paid no more heed to him than if he had been a stone. She still looked at the officer. “Then you will take me with you, sir?” she says.
“Faith, and so I will, mistress,” says he, “if you can make shift to ride on one of my men’s saddles.”
“You are wrong, Captain Stott,” says Anthony Dacre, “I agreed with Sands——”
“Look you, Master Dacre,” says the other, “the young woman is free, and I know naught of your arrangements with Sands or anybody else. And since she asks me for a lift into Pomfret,” he says, “why, she shall have it, and there’s an end.”