"Not a word to him! Father Lamormain suspects! I know not how much, but much!"
"You must plan, and I must plan!" said Nigel. "We are in a serious case. If we be not wedded in a little, wedded we two shall never be. It is too much to set the Emperor and the Elector at defiance and not expect reprisals. But if we be wedded, beloved Stephanie, we may even get off with a hair shirt and smock, saving your Highness, and exile to some remote castle in the Grisons."
Nigel was no screech-owl, nor in the way of seeing ill before it came except to prevent it, so his tone was gay; but there was doubt beneath.
"How did the Elector take it?" he went on.
"Faith, Nigel mine, but like as a pinch of sunshine peeps out between the gathering clouds and is now quite shut out, so he seemed to smile, but his brows were threatening black and his teeth gleamed a little.
"There is a touch of fantasy about the Wittelsbachers. Born in a lowlier station, Maximilian might have become a sad kind of troubadour, or a prophesying friar. Being a prince, he is capable of carrying out any wild imagining he might have to snatch me to him, or to wreak his disappointment."
"And we are in his hands here!" said Nigel.
"To-morrow, think you, Tall Captain, if I took the air on horseback without the walls, the Swede not yet being come up, that you could mount a charger and meet me by chance three leagues distance. If there were no guards out we might perchance slip further still and make our way——"
"To what port of shelter?"
"To Znaim! Sure Wallenstein would make you one of his new captains, and Znaim would be a veritable city of refuge!"