"No, nor seek to know it, unless she chooses to tell me. I did not even
guess that she had you in hiding."
"Mrs. Gaunt is careful, but I can trust the lips that now reprove me.
They were made for better things than betraying a friend. I would
willingly have some good advice from them, seeing that they speak wise
words so readily." And so saying he sat down on the settle, and looked
at me smiling.
I was offended, and with reason, at the freedom of his speech; yet, his
manner, was so much beyond anything I had been accustomed to for ease
and pleasantness, that I soon forgave him, and when he encouraged me,
began to prattle about my affairs, being only, with all my conceit, the
silly lassie my mistress had called me.
I talked of my home and my own kindred, and the friends I had had--which
things had now all the charm of remoteness for me--and he listened with
interest, catching up the names of places, and even of persons, as if
they were not altogether strange to him, and asking me further of them.
"What could make you leave so happy a home for such a dungeon as this?"
he asked, looking round.
Then I hung my head, and reddened foolishly, but he gave a loud laugh
and said, "I can well understand. There was some country lout that your
father would have wedded you to. That is the way with the prettiest
maidens."
"Tom Windham was no country lout," I answered proudly; upon which he
leaned forward and asked, "What name was that you said? Windham? and
from Westover? Is he a tall fellow with straw-coloured hair and a cut
over his left eye?"
"He got it in a good cause," I answered swiftly; "have you seen him?"
"Yes, lately.
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