The Heart

When the cases were all deposited in the great room, Mistress Mary

held a short conference apart with Captain Calvin Tabor, and I saw

some gold pass from her hand to his. Then she thanked him and the

sailors for their trouble very prettily in that way she had which

would have made every one as willing to die for her as to carry

heavy weights. Then we all filed out from the house, and Mistress

Mary locked the door, and bade good-bye to Captain Tabor; then he

and his men took again the bridle-path back to the ship, and she and

I proceeded churchward on the highway.

When we were once alone together I spurred my horse up to hers and

caught her bridle and rode alongside and spoke to her as if all the

past were naught, and I with the rights to which I had been born. It

had come to that pass with me in those days that all the pride I had

left was that of humility, but even that I was ready to give up for

her if necessary.

"Tell me, Madam," said I, "what was in those cases?"

"Have I not told you?" said she, and I knew that she whitened under

her mask.

"There is more than woman's finery in those cases, which weigh like

lead," said I. "What do they contain?"

Mistress Mary had, after all, little of the feminine power of

subterfuge in her. If she tried it, it was, as in this case, too

transparent. Straight to the point she went with perfect frankness

of daring and rebellion as a boy might.

"It requires not much wit, methinks, Master Wingfield, to see that,"

said she. Then she laughed. "Lord, how the poor sailor-men toiled to

lift my gauzes and feathers and ribbons!" said she. Then her blue

eyes looked at me through her mask with indescribable daring and

defiance.

"Well, and what will you do?" said she. "You are a gentleman in

spite--you are a gentleman, you cannot betray me to my hurt, and

you cannot command me like a child, for I am a child no longer, and

I will not tell you what those cases contain."

"You shall tell me," said I.

"Make me if you can," said she.

"Tell me what those cases contain," said I.

Then she collapsed all at once as only the citadel of a woman's will

can do through some inner weakness.

"Guns and powder and shot and partizans," said she. Then she added,

like one who would fain readjust herself upon the heights of her own

resolution by a good excuse for having fallen--"Fie, why should I

not have told you, Master Wingfield? You cannot betray me, for you

are a gentleman, and I am not a child."