"But how can you believe me in anything, since you know how I have deceived you?" said he, as if he could not understand how she should make no sign of her displeasure.
"'Twas but a jest, as you say," she answered, good-naturedly, but still with a trifle of reserve. "And no harm has come of it. I would leave it aside, good sir."
"Harm?" said he, regarding her with a kind of anxious timidity. "That may or may not be, sweet lady, as time will show. If I dared but speak to you—well, bethink you of my meeting you here from day to day, in these quiet retreats, and seeing such a sweetness and beauty and womanliness as I have never met in the world before—such a wonder of gentleness and kindness——"
"I would ask you to spare me these compliments," said she, simply. "I thought 'twas some serious matter you had in hand."
"Serious enough i' faith!" he said, in an altered tone, as if she had recalled him to a sense of the position in which he stood. "But there is the one way out of it, after all. I can sell my life away for money to pacify those fiends; nay, besides that, I should live in abundance, doubtless, and be esteemed a most fortunate gentleman, and one to be envied. A gilded prison-house and slavery; but what would the fools think of that if they saw me with a good fat purse at the tavern?"
Again he regarded her.
"There is another way yet, however, if I must needs trouble you, dear Mistress Judith, with my poor affairs. What if I were to break with that accursed London altogether, and go off and fight my way in another country, as many a better man hath done? ay, and there be still one or two left who would help me to escape if they saw me on the way to reform, as they would call it. And what would I not do in that way—ay, or in any way—if I could hope for a certain prize to be won at the end of it all?"
"And that, good sir?"
"That," said he, watching her face—"the reward that would be enough and more than enough for all I might suffer would be just this—to find Judith Shakespeare coming to meet me in this very lane."
"Oh, no, sir," was her immediate and incoherent exclamation; and then she promptly pulled herself together, and said, with some touch of pride: "Indeed, good sir, you talk wildly. I scarce understand how you can be in such grave trouble."