They looked straight into each other's eyes.
"Nance, I'm not afraid of anything—for your sake. Take heart, dear, take heart."
Her lips quivered. Her white face and dark hair seemed to swim nearer to him in the moonlight.
"Nance——"
Their lips met. Her upturned face dreamed for a moment with shadowy mouth and closed eyes. Then she drew her hands away, and fled in a shy panic across the grass.
Jasper watched her with exultant tenderness. She paused, and turned at the steps, waved to him and disappeared. He was hidden from the house by the furze bushes, and he kept cover there lest Anthony Durrell should be watching from one of the windows.
Jasper made his way back toward Bramble End and Tom Stook's cottage. The night seemed very wonderful. The black summer woods reminded him of Nance's hair.
Three miles away De Rothan was riding slowly along lanes and field paths, moody-eyed and savage, a man possessed by ugly emotions. Jerome's failure to appear at the quarry had not troubled him very greatly. It was a dull anger against the man who had toppled him into a ditch that filled De Rothan's consciousness. He hated Jasper Benham with all the hatred of which a strong and passionate man is capable. He meant to be revenged, to salve his own smarting self-conceit. But even the easing of this blood lust was an inopportune necessity thrust upon him in the thick of many dangers. The affair had come to a head at the moment when De Rothan least desired it, for there were the larger issues to be remembered. In ten days—twenty days—a month, Napoleon might be in England. De Rothan wanted those days free and untrammelled. If he could only fight this man in some secret corner, and leave him lying hidden in a ditch! Yes, but would Jasper Benham consent to such conditions? Would it be possible for them to fight without a living soul knowing of the quarrel? De Rothan felt sore and savage over the problem. It threatened confusion to his plans, promised to interfere with the delicate balancing of possible events.
He reached the Brick House about three in the morning, stabled his horse, and was let in by the man Gaston. Supper had been laid in the long parlour, and De Rothan sat down and ate with the morose deliberation of a man who is vexed by his own thoughts. He was tired, too, and thirsty, and wine was a welcome sustainer. The long night spent in the open made itself felt. De Rothan fell asleep in his chair, while the two candles on the table burned steadily toward the sockets.
The light of the dawn was just touching the windows when a man came up the brick path to the porch and hammered at the oak door. The sound woke De Rothan, who sat up in his chair and stared at the candles. The knocking at the door was loud and persistent. De Rothan took a hanger down from over the fireplace, picked up one of the candles, and went out into the hall. There was a grill in the door, closed by a little wooden shutter. De Rothan set the candlestick on the floor, pushed back the shutter, and, looking through, saw a piece of greyish sky, and a man's right shoulder.