e is danger in this thing that you are undertaking?" said she,
between question and assertion.

"It is not my wish to overstate it; yet I leave you to imagine what the
risk may be."

"It is a good cause," said she, thinking of the poor, deluded, humble
folk that followed Monmouth's banner, whom Blake's fine action was to
rescue from impending ruin and annihilation, "and surely Heaven will be
on your side."

"We must prevail," cried Blake with kindling eye, and you had thought
him a fanatic, not a miserable earner of blood-money. "We must
prevail, though some of us may pay dearly for the victory. I have a
foreboding..." He paused, sighed, then laughed and flung back his head,
as if throwing off some weight that had oppressed him.

It was admirably played; Nick Trenchard, had he observed it, might have
envied the performance; and it took effect with her, this adding of a
prospective martyr's crown to the hero's raiment he had earlier donned.
It was a master-touch worthy of one who was deeply learned--from the
school of foul experience--in the secret ways that lead to a woman's
favour. In a pursuit of this kind there was no subterfuge too mean, no
treachery too base for Sir Rowland Blake.

"Will you walk, mistress?" he said, and she, feeling that it were an
unkindness not to do his will, assented gravely. They moved down the
sloping lawn, side by side, Sir Rowland leaning on his cane, bareheaded,
his feathered hat tucked under his arm. Before them the river's smooth
expanse, swollen and yellow with the recent rains, glowed like a sheet
of copper, so that it blurred the sight to look upon it long.

A few steps they took with no word uttered, then Sir Rowland spoke.
"With this foreboding that is on me," said he, "I could not go without
seeing you, without saying something that I may never have another
chance of saying; something that--who knows?--but for the emprise to
which I am now wedded you had never heard from me."

He shot her a furtive, sidelong glance from under his heavy, beetling
brows, and now, indeed, he observed a change ripple over the composure
of her face like a sudden breeze across a sheet of water. The deep lace
collar at her throat rose and fell, and her fingers toyed nervously with
a ribbon of her grey bodice. She recovered in an instant, and threw up
entrenchments against the attack she saw he was about to make.

"You exaggerate, I trust," said she. "Your forebodings will be proved
groundless. Y