"He saved his life by a lie! That was worthy of him," said Cynthia scornfully.

"Nay, child, he spoke the truth, and when Joseph offered to restore the boy to him, he had every intention of so doing. But in the moment of writing the superscription to the letter Crispin was to bear to those that had reared the child, Joseph bethought him of a foul scheme for Galliard's final destruction. And so he has sent him to London instead, to a house in Thames Street, where dwells one Colonel Pride, who bears Sir Crispin a heavy grudge, and into whose hands he will be thus delivered. Can aught be done, Cynthia, to arrest this--to save Sir Crispin from Joseph's snare?"

"As well might you seek to restore the breath to a dead man," she answered, and her voice was so oddly calm, so cold and bare of expression, that Gregory shuddered to hear it.

"Do not delude yourself," she added. "Sir Crispin will have reached London long ere this, and by now Joseph will be well on his way to see that there is no mistake made, and that the life you ruined hopelessly years ago is plucked at last from this unfortunate man. Merciful G.o.d! am I truly your daughter?" she cried. "Is my name indeed Ashburn, and have I been reared upon the estates that by crime you gained possession of?

Estates that by crime you hold--for they are his; every stone, every stick that goes to make the place belongs to him, and now he has gone to his death by your contriving."

A moan escaped her, and she covered her face with her hands. A moment she stood rocking there--a fair, lissom plant swept by a gale of ineffable emotion. Then the breath seemed to go all out of her in one great sigh, and Gregory, who dared not look her way, heard the swish of her gown, followed by a thud as she collapsed and lay swooning on the ground.

So disturbed at that was Gregory's spirit that, forgetting his wound, his fever, and the death which he had believed impending, he leapt from his couch, and throwing wide the door, bellowed l.u.s.tily for Stephen. In frightened haste came his henchman to answer the petulant summons, and in obedience to Gregory's commands he went off again as quickly in quest of Catherine--Cynthia's woman.

Between them they bore the unconscious girl to her chamber, leaving Gregory to curse himself for having been lured into a confession that it now seemed to him had been unnecessary, since in his newly found vitality he realized that death was none so near a thing as that scoundrelly fool of a leech had led him to believe.

CHAPTER XXIV. THE WOOING OF CYNTHIA

Cynthia's swoon was after all but brief. Upon recovering consciousness her first act was to dismiss her woman. She had need to be alone--the need of the animal that is wounded to creep into its lair and hide itself. And so alone with her sorrow she sat through that long day.

That her father's condition was grievous she knew to be untrue, so that concerning him there was not even that pity that she might have felt had she believed--as he would have had her believe that he was dying.

As she pondered the monstrous disclosure he had made, her heart hardened against him, and even as she had asked him whether indeed she was his daughter, so now she vowed to herself that she would be his daughter no longer. She would leave Castle Marleigh, never again to set eyes upon her father, and she hoped that during the little time she must yet remain there--a day, or two at most--she might be spared the ordeal of again meeting a parent for whom respect was dead, and who inspired her with just that feeling of horror she must have for any man who confessed himself a murderer and a thief.

She resolved to repair to London to a sister of her mother's, where for her dead mother's sake she would find a haven extended readily.

At eventide she came at last from her chamber.

She had need of air, need of the balm that nature alone can offer in solitude to poor wounded human souls.

It was a mild and sunny evening, worthy rather of August than of October, and aimlessly Mistress Cynthia wandered towards the cliffs overlooking Sheringham Hithe. There she sate herself in sad dejection upon the gra.s.s, and gazed wistfully seaward, her mind straying now from the sorry theme that had held dominion in it, to the memories that very spot evoked.

It was there, sitting as she sat now, her eyes upon the shimmering waste of sea, and the gulls circling overhead, that she had awakened to the knowledge of her love for Crispin. And so to him strayed now her thoughts, and to the fate her father had sent him to; and thus back again to her father and the evil he had wrought. It is matter for conjecture whether her loathing for Gregory would have been as intense as it was, had another than Crispin Galliard been his victim.

Her life seemed at an end as she sat that October evening on the cliffs.

No single interest linked her to existence; nothing, it seemed, was left her to hope for till the end should come--and no doubt it would be long in coming, for time moves slowly when we wait.

Wistful she sat and thought, and every thought begat a sigh, and then of a sudden--surely her ears had tricked her, enslaved by her imagination--a crisp, metallic voice rang out close behind her.

"Why are we pensive, Mistress Cynthia?"

There was a catch in her breath as she turned her head. Her cheeks took fire, and for a second were aflame. Then they went deadly white, and it seemed that time and life and the very world had paused in its relentless progress towards eternity. For there stood the object of her thoughts and sighs, sudden and unexpected, as though the earth had cast him up on to her surface.

His thin lips were parted in a smile that softened wondrously the harshness of his face, and his eyes seemed then to her alight with kindness. A moment's pause there was, during which she sought her voice, and when she had found it, all that she could falter was:

"Sir, how came you here? They told me that you rode to London."

"Why, so I did. But on the road I chanced to halt, and having halted I discovered reason why I should return."

He had discovered a reason. She asked herself breathlessly what might that reason be, and finding herself no answer to the question, she put it next to him.

He drew near to her before replying. "May I sit with you awhile, Cynthia?"

She moved aside to make room for him, as though the broad cliff had been a narrow ledge, and with the sigh of a weary man finding a resting-place at last, he sank down beside her.

There was a tenderness in his voice that set her pulses stirring wildly.

Did she guess aright the reason that had caused him to break his journey and return? That he had done so--no matter what the reason--she thanked G.o.d from her inmost heart, as for a miracle that had saved him from the doom awaiting him in London town.

"Am I presumptuous, child, to think that haply the meditation in which I found you rapt was for one, unworthy though he be, who went hence but some few days since?"

The ambiguous question drove every thought from her mind, filling it to overflowing with the supreme good of his presence, and the frantic hope that she had read aright the reason of it.

"Have I conjectured rightly?" he asked, since she kept silence.

"Mayhap you have," she whispered in return, and then, marvelling at her boldness, blushed. He glanced sharply at her from narrowing eyes. It was not the answer he had looked to hear.

As a father might have done he took the slender hand that rested upon the gra.s.s beside him, and she, poor child, mistaking the promptings of that action, suffered it to lie in his strong grasp. With averted head she gazed upon the sea below, until a mist of tears rose up to blot it out. The breeze seemed full of melody and gladness. G.o.d was very good to her, and sent her in her hour of need this great consolation--a consolation indeed that must have served to efface whatever sorrow could have beset her.

"Why then, sweet lady, is my task that I had feared to find all fraught with difficulty, grown easy indeed."

And hearing him pause:

"What task is that, Sir Crispin?" she asked, intent on helping him.

He did not reply at once. He found it difficult to devise an answer.

To tell her brutally that he was come to bear her away, willing or unwilling, on behalf of another, was not easy. Indeed, it was impossible, and he was glad that inclinations in her which he had little dreamt of, put the necessity aside.

"My task, Mistress Cynthia, is to bear you hence. To ask you to resign this peaceful life, this quiet home in a little corner of the world, and to go forth to bear life's hardships with one who, whatever be his shortcomings, has the all-redeeming virtue of loving you beyond aught else in life."

He gazed intently at her as he spoke, and her eyes fell before his glance. He noted the warm, red blood suffusing her cheeks, her brow, her very neck; and he could have laughed aloud for joy at finding so simple that which he had feared would prove so hard. Some pity, too, crept unaccountably into his stern heart, fathered by the little faith which in his inmost soul he reposed in Jocelyn. And where, had she resisted him, he would have grown harsh and violent, her acquiescence struck the weapons from his hands, and he caught himself well-nigh warning her against accompanying him.

"It is much to ask," he said. "But love is selfish, and love asks much."

"No, no," she protested softly, "it is not much to ask. Rather is it much to offer."

At that he was aghast. Yet he continued:

"Bethink you, Mistress Cynthia, I have ridden back to Sheringham to ask you to come with me into France, where my son awaits us?"

He forgot for the moment that she was in ignorance of his relationship to him he looked upon as her lover, whilst she gave this mention of his son, of whose existence she had already heard from her; father, little thought at that moment. The hour was too full of other things that touched her more nearly.

"I ask you to abandon the ease and peace of Sheringham for a life as a soldier's bride that may be rough and precarious for a while, though, truth to tell, I have some influence at the Luxembourg, and friends upon whose a.s.sistance I can safely count, to find your husband honourable employment, and set him on the road to more. And how, guided by so sweet a saint, can he but mount to fame and honour?"

She spoke no word, but the hand resting in his entwined his fingers in an answering pressure.

"Dare I then ask so much?" cried he. And as if the ambiguity which had marked his speech were not enough, he must needs, as he put this question, bend in his eagerness towards her until her brown tresses touched his swart cheek. Was it then strange that the eagerness wherewith he urged another's suit should have been by her interpreted as her heart would have had it?