"You may trust me!" said Nigel, taking her by the arm and making across the Mainzerhof bridge over the Bergstrom, a branch of the main waterway that threads the town as a string does a row of paunchy beads from Leipzig Fair.
"'Tis not the shortest way, but it is the least lonely. Tell me why you consorted with Protestants even to the risk of death or worse in Magdeburg?"
"Captain Charteris!" She spoke in low clear tones which could reach his ear alone. "It is no article of our compact to tell you these things. It is just as well for you to know nothing. It is a great protection sometimes not to know anything."
"Count Tilly said that same thing!" said Nigel. "Is it a password of the Rosicrucians?"
"Then he warned you against me!" she said in a tone of triumph.
Nigel bit his lip for its indiscretion.
"He gave it as a piece of general advice," he said. "But what is in our compact?"
"Merely this!" she replied. "You were to conduct us to Erfurt. You were to put us into the company of trustworthy people so that we might pursue our way to Eisenach."
"That is true!" said Nigel. "Yet it is not to be wondered at if I cast about to know more of a noble lady who first tries to stab me with a dagger, then takes a passing interest in my parentage, whom next I find by an extraordinary chance sobbing in a dark corner of a cathedral, whom, finally, I have the honour of conducting to her lodging at an hour when most noble ladies are glad to be within doors." There was a vein of humour in his tone rather than in what he said.