"To what end?" she cried, and he saw in her face a dismay that amounted almost to fear, and he wondered was it for him.
"To place my sword at his service. Were I not encompassed by this ruin, I should not have stirred a foot in that direction--so rash, so foredoomed to failure is this invasion. As it is,"--he shrugged and laughed--"it is the only hope--all forlorn though it may be--for me."
The trammels she had imposed upon her soul fell away at that like bonds of cobweb. She laid her hand upon his wrists, tears stood in her eyes; her lips quivered.
"Anthony, forgive me," she besought him. He trembled under her touch, under the caress of her voice, and at the sound of his name for the first time upon her lips.
"What have I to forgive?" he asked.
"The thing that I did in the matter of that letter."
"You poor child," said he, smiling gently upon her, "you did it in self-defence."
"Yet say that you forgive me--say it before you go!" she begged him.
He considered her gravely a moment. "To what end," he asked, "do you imagine that I have talked so much? To the end that I might show you that however I may have wronged you I have at the last made some amends; and that for the sake of this, the truest proof of penitence, I may have your forgiveness ere I go."
She was weeping softly. "It was an ill day on which we met," she sighed.
"For you--aye."
"Nay--for you.
"We'll say for both of us, then," he compromised. "See, Ruth, your cousin grows weary, and I have a couple of comrades who are no doubt impatient to be gone. It may not be good for us to tarry in these parts. Some amends I have made; but there is one crowning wrong which I have done you for which there is but one amend to make." He paused. He steadied himself before continuing. In his attempt to render his voice cold and commonplace he went near to achieving harshness. "It may be that this crackbrained rebellion of which the torch is already alight will, if it does no other good in England, at least make a widow of you. When that has come to pass, when I have thus repaired the wrong I did you, I hope you'll bear me as kindly as may be in your thought. Good-bye, my Ruth! I would you might have loved me. I sought to force it." He smiled ever so wanly. "Perhaps that was my mistake. It is an ill thing to eat one's hay while it is grass." He raised to his lips the little gloved hand that still rested on his wrist. "God keep you, Ruth!" he murmured.