ed a thing which I remember even now with shame.

The man who had betrayed my mistress came disguised (for he was now at
liberty to fly from the anger of the populace and the horror of his
friends) and he begged me to go with him and to share his fortunes,
telling me that he feared solitude above everything, and crying to me to
help him against his own dreadful thoughts.

I answered him with horror and indignation; but he said I should rather
pity him, seeing that many another man would have acted so in his place;
and others might have been in his place easily enough.

"For," said he, "your friend Windham was among those that came to take
service under the Duke and had to be sent away because there were no
more arms. He was sorely disappointed that he could not join us."

"Then," said I suddenly, "this was doubtless the reason why he fled the
country--lest any should inform against him."

"That is so," he answered; "and a narrow escape he has had; for if he
had fought as he desired he might well have been in my place this day."

"In Elizabeth Gaunt's rather!" I answered. "He would himself have died
at the stake before he could have been brought to betray the woman that
had helped him."

"You had a poorer opinion of him a short while ago."

"I knew not the world. I knew not men. I knew not _you_. Go! Go! Take
away your miserable life--for which two good and useful lives have been
given--and make what you can of it. I would--coward as I am--go back to
my mistress and die with her rather than have any share in it!"

He tarried no more, and I was left alone. Not a creature came near me.
It may be that my neighbours had seen him enter, and thought of me with
horror as a condoner of his crime; it may be that they were afraid to
meddle with a house that had fallen into so terrible a trouble; or that
the frightful hurricane that burst forth and raged that day (as if to
show that God's anger was aroused and His justice, though delayed, not
forgotten) kept them trembling in their houses.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: A Knocking at Nightfall]

What would have befallen me if I had been left long alone in that great
and evil city I know not, for I had no wits left to make any plans for
myself. At nightfall, however, there came once more a knocking, and when
I opened the door my father stood on the threshold. There seemed no
strangeness in his presence, and I fell into his arms weeping, so that
he