Then there happened a thing which I remember even now with shame.
The man who had betrayed my mistress came disguised (for he was now at liberty to fly from the anger of the populace and the horror of his friends) and he begged me to go with him and to share his fortunes, telling me that he feared solitude above everything, and crying to me to help him against his own dreadful thoughts.
I answered him with horror and indignation; but he said I should rather pity him, seeing that many another man would have acted so in his place; and others might have been in his place easily enough.
"For," said he, "your friend Windham was among those that came to take service under the Duke and had to be sent away because there were no more arms. He was sorely disappointed that he could not join us."
"Then," said I suddenly, "this was doubtless the reason why he fled the country—lest any should inform against him."
"That is so," he answered; "and a narrow escape he has had; for if he had fought as he desired he might well have been in my place this day."
"In Elizabeth Gaunt's rather!" I answered. "He would himself have died at the stake before he could have been brought to betray the woman that had helped him."
"You had a poorer opinion of him a short while ago."
"I knew not the world. I knew not men. I knew not you. Go! Go! Take away your miserable life—for which two good and useful lives have been given—and make what you can of it. I would—coward as I am—go back to my mistress and die with her rather than have any share in it!"
He tarried no more, and I was left alone. Not a creature came near me. It may be that my neighbours had seen him enter, and thought of me with horror as a condoner of his crime; it may be that they were afraid to meddle with a house that had fallen into so terrible a trouble; or that the frightful hurricane that burst forth and raged that day (as if to show that God's anger was aroused and His justice, though delayed, not forgotten) kept them trembling in their houses.