She looked at him with a strange smile, a fine gesture of scorn. “Marry you, loving you not! That will I never do. Protector! That is a word I have grown to dislike. My name! It is a slight thing. What matter if folk look askance when it is only Darden’s Audrey? And there are those whom an ill fame does not frighten. The schoolmaster will still give me books to read, and tell me what they mean. He will not care, nor the drunken minister, nor Hugon.... I am going back to them, to Mistress Deborah and the glebe house. She will beat me, and the minister will curse, but they will take me in.... I will work very hard, and never look to Fair View. I see now that I could never reach the mountains.” She began to move toward the door. He kept with her, step for step, his eyes upon her face. “You will come no more to the glebe house,” she said. “If you do, though the mountains be far the river is near.” He put his hand upon the latch of the door. “You will rest here to-night?” he asked gently, as of a child. “I will speak to Colonel Byrd; to-morrow he will send some one with you down the river. It will be managed for you, and as you wish. You will rest to-night? You go from me now to your room, Audrey?” “Yes,” she answered, and thought she spoke the truth. “I love you,--love you greatly,” he continued. “I will conquer,--conquer and atone! But now, poor tired one, I let you go. Sleep, Audrey, sleep and dream again.” He held open the door for her, and stood aside with bent head. She passed him; then turned, and after a moment of silence spoke to him with a strange and sorrowful stateliness. “You think, sir,” she said, “that I have something to forgive?” “Much,” he answered,--“very much, Audrey.” “And you wish my forgiveness?” “Ay, Audrey, your forgiveness and your love.” “The first is mine to give,” she said. “If you wish it, take it. I forgive you, sir. Good-by.” “Good-night,” he answered. “Audrey, good-night.” “Good-by,” she repeated, and slowly mounting the broad staircase passed from his sight. It was dark in the upper hall, but there was a great glimmer of sky, an opal space to mark a window that gave upon the sloping lawn and pallid river. The pale light seemed to beckon. Audrey went not on to her attic room, but to the window, and in doing so passed a small half-open door. As she went by she glanced through the aperture, and saw that there was a narrow stairway, built for the servants’ use, winding down to a door in the western face of the house.