"But----" he paused.
"There is a landlady, I suppose?"
"Yes, but----"
"You will do what I say to-day," she replied firmly--and now the fine curves of her lips were pressed together, and she hummed no more--"if you wish me to obey you to-morrow."
"Dearest, you know----"
But she cut him short. "Please to say that it shall be so," she said.
He swore that he would obey her then and always. And bursting again into song as the carriage climbed the hill, she flung from her the mood that had for a moment possessed her, and was a child again. She made gay faces at him, each more tantalising than the other; gave him look for look, each more tender than the other; and with the tips of her dainty fingers blew him kisses in exchange for his. Her helmet-shaped bonnet, with its huge plume of feathers, lay in her lap. The heavy coils of her fair, almost flaxen, hair were given to view, and under the fire of his flatteries the delicacy of colouring--for pallor it could scarcely be called--which so often accompanies very light hair, and was the sole defect of her beauty, gave place to blushes that fired his blood.
But he knew something of her spirit. He knew that she had it in her to turn back even now. He knew that he might cajole, but could never browbeat her. And he restrained himself the more easily, as, in spite of the passion and eloquence--some called it vapouring--which made him a hero where thousands listened, he gave her credit for the stronger nature. He held her childishness, her frivolity, her naïveté, in contempt. Yet he could not shake off his fear of what she might do--when she knew.
They paid off the guide under the walls of the old priory church at Cartmel, with the children of the village crowding about the doors of the chaise; then with a fresh team they started up the valley that leads to the foot of Windermere lake. But now the November day was beginning to draw in. The fell on their right took gloomier shape; on their left a brook sopped its way through low marsh-covered fields; and here and there the leafless limbs of trees pointed to the grey. And first one and then the other, with the shrill cries of moor-birds in their ears, and the fading landscape before their eyes, fell silent. Then, had they been as other lovers, had she stood more safely, or he been single-hearted, he had taken her in his arms and held her close, and comforted her, and the dusk within had been but the frame and set-off to their love.
But as it was he feared to make overtures, and they sat each in a corner until, in sheer dread of the effect which reflection might have on her, he asked her if she feared pursuit; adding, "Depend upon it, darling, you need not; Sir Charles will not give a thought to this road."
She drummed thoughtfully with her fingers on the pane.
"I am not afraid of my brother," she said.
"Then of whom?"
"Of Anthony," she answered, and corrected herself hurriedly--"of Captain Clyne, I mean. He will think of this road."
"But he will not have had the news before noon," Stewart answered. "It is eighteen miles from your brother's to the Old Hall. And besides, I thought that he did not love you."
"He does not," she rejoined, "but he loves himself. He loves his pride. And this will hit both--hard! I am not quite sure," she continued very slowly and thoughtfully, "that I am not a little sorry for him. He made so certain, you see. He thought all arranged. A week to-day was the day fixed, and--yes," impetuously, "I am sorry for him, though I hated him yesterday."
Stewart was silent a moment.
"I hate him to-day," he said.
"Why?"
His eyes sparkled.
"I hate all his kind," he said. "They are hard as stones, stiff as oaks, cruel as--as their own laws! A man is no man to them, unless he is of"--he paused almost imperceptibly--"our class! A law is no law to them unless they administer it! They see men die of starvation at their gates, but all is right, all is just, all is for the best, as long as they govern!"
"I don't think you know him," she said, somewhat stiffly.
"Oh, I know him!"
"But----"
"Oh, I know him!" he repeated, the faint note of protest in her voice serving to excite him. "He was at Manchester. There were a hundred thousand men out of work--starving, seeing their wives starve, seeing their children starve. And they came to Manchester and met. And he was there, and he was one of those who signed the order for the soldiers to ride them down--men, women, and children, without arms, and packed so closely that they could not flee!"
"Well," she said pertly, "you would not have us all murdered in our beds?"
He opened his mouth, and he shut it again. He knew that he had been a fool. He knew that he had gone near to betraying himself. She was nineteen, and thoughtless; she had been bred in the class he hated; she had never heard any political doctrines save those which that class, the governing class, held; and though twice or thrice he had essayed faintly to imbue her with his notions of liberty and equality and fraternity, and had pictured her with the red cap of freedom perched on her flaxen head, the only liberty in which he had been able to interest her had been her own!
By-and-by, in different conditions, she might be more amenable, should he then think it worth while to convert her. For the present his eloquence was stayed in midstream. Yet he could not be altogether silent, for he was a man to whom words were very dear.
"Well," he said in a lower tone, "there is something in that, sweet. But I know worse of him than that. You may think it right to transport a man for seven years for poaching a hare----"
"They should not poach," she said lightly, "and they would not be transported!"
"But you will think differently of flogging a man to death!"
Her face flushed.
"I don't believe it!" she cried.
"On his ship in Plymouth Harbour they will tell you differently."
"I don't believe it!" she replied, with passion. And then, "How horrid you are!" she continued. "And it is nearly dark! Why do you talk of such things? You are jealous of him--that is what you are!"
He saw the wisdom of sliding back into their old relations, and he seized the opportunity her words offered.
"Yes," he murmured, "I am jealous of him. And why not? I am jealous of the wind that caresses your cheek, of the carpet that feels your tread, of the star that peeps in at your window! I am jealous of all who come near you, or speak to you, or look at you!"
"Are you really?"--in a tone of childish delight. "As jealous as that?"
He swore it with many phrases.
"And you will be so always?" she sighed softly, leaning towards him. "Always--Alan?"
"To eternity!" he answered. And emboldened by her melting mood, he would have taken her hand, and perhaps more than her hand, but at that moment the lights of the inn at Newby Bridge flashed on them suddenly, the roar of the water as it rushed over the weirs surprised their ears, the postboys cracked their whips, and the carriage bounded and rattled over the steep pitch of the narrow bridge. A second or two later it came to a stand before the inn amid a crowd of helpers and stable lads, whose lanthorns dazzled the travellers' eyes.
They stayed only to change horses, then were away again. But the halt sufficed to cool his courage; and as they pounded on monotonously through the night, the darkness and the dim distances of river and lake--for they were approaching the shores of Windermere--produced their natural effect on Henrietta's feelings. She had been travelling since early morning cooped and cramped within the narrow chaise; she had spent the previous night in a fever of suspense and restlessness. Now, though