"Sir," she said, "you have committed a breach of hospitality in entering
a chamber to which I have never invited you. Will you go back to your
own?"
He bowed with a courteous apology and muttered something about the
temptation being too great. Then he left us alone.
"Child," she said to me, "has that man told you anything of his own
affairs?"
"Only that he is in trouble, and must fly beyond seas."
"Pray God he may go quickly," she said devoutly. "I fear he is no man to
be trusted."
"Yet you help him," I answered.
"I help many that I could not trust," she said with quietness; "they
have the more need of help." And in truth I know that much of her good
work was among those evil-doers that others shrank from.
"This man seems strong enough to help himself," I said.
"Would that he may go quickly," was all her answer. "If the means could
but be found!"
Then she spoke to me with great urgency, commanding me to hold no
discourse with him nor with any concerning him.
I did my best to fulfil her bidding, yet it was difficult; for he was a
man who knew the world and how to take his own way in it. He contrived
more than once to see me, and to pay a kind of court to me, half in jest
and half in earnest; so that I was sometimes flattered and sometimes
angered, and sometimes frighted.
Then other circumstances happened unexpectedly, for I had a visitor that
I had never looked to see there.
Pages:
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133