away from here to-morrow."

"Yes, to the meeting," she said, looking up at him brightly from her seat
on the wooden bench on the hill-top.

"Away from here," he repeated. "But not to the meeting unless you send
me." Then he stood quite still opposite to her for a minute. "Because
unless you care for me to do it, I don't care to do it," he went on.

A long silence followed as she sat there, looking past him down into the
rich valley that spread from the foot of the hill. The fascination was
strong on her, the fear was strong on her too; but for the moment the
repulsion was forgotten. For he had risen to the occasion, as Dick Benyon
maintained that he always did; not a word too much, not an entreaty too
extravagant, not an epithet too florid had found passage from his lips.
His instinct of the way to treat a great and important situation had
saved him and brought him triumphantly through all the perils. He did not
ignore what he was, he did not disguise his knowledge of his powers;
knowing what they were and the value of his offering, he laid them all at
her feet and asked in return no more than her leave and her command to
use them.

She raised her eyes to his pale eager face.

"I send you then," she said. "And now walk with me down the hill and tell
me what you'll say at Manchester."

That night, before she went to bed, she wrote to Weston Marchmont;

"Dear Friend,--I will not wait to see you again. I can't do what you
wish. Everything else I could do for you, and everything else that
you wish I wish for you. But I can't do that."

Alas for the renewed peace of Lady Richard's mind, alas for the returning
quiet of Dick Benyon's conscience! Quisante made his preparations for
going with his eyes all agleam, murmuring again and again, "She sends me;
she shall see what I'm worth." For one of his great moments had come in
the nick of time and done a work that he himself, low as he might now and
again fall, could hardly quite undo.

CHAPTER VII.

ADVICE FROM AUNT MARIA.

The two Cabinet Ministers brought back from Manchester different accounts
of Quisante's speech and its effects. One said it was frothy rhetoric
heard in puzzled lethargy, the other that it was genuine eloquence
received with the hush of profound attention, but hailed at the end with
rapturous enthusiasm. This was a typical case of the division of opinion
which began to prevail