'Oh, Madam,' I said, 'as for the misery--any other kind of misery I would willingly endure; but it is marriage--marriage! Yet who am I that I should choose my sacrifice? Oh, if good works were of any avail, then would the way to heaven be opened wide for me by such an act and such a life! Oh, what will Robin say of me? What will he think of me? Will he curse me and loathe me for being able to do this thing? Should I do it? Is it right? Doth God command it? Yet to save their dear lives--only to set them free--to send that good old man back to his home--to suffer my father to die in peace!--I must do it--I must do it! Yet Robin could never forgive me. Oh! he told me that betrothal was a sacrament. I have sworn to be his. Yet, to save his life, I cannot hesitate. If it is wrong, I pray that Robin will forgive me. Tell him--oh, tell him that it is I who am to die instead of him. Perhaps the Lord will suffer me to die quickly. Tell him that I loved him, and only him; that I would rather have died; that for his life alone I would not have done this thing, because he would not have suffered it. But it is for all--it is for all! Oh! he must forgive me! Some day you will send me a message of forgiveness from him. But I must go away and live in London, far from all of you; never to see him or any one of you again--not even my own mother. It is too shameful a thing to do. And you will tell his Honour, who hath always loved me and would willingly have called me his granddaughter. It was not that I loved not Robin--God knoweth that; but for all--for him and Robin and all--to save his grey hairs from the gallows, and to send him back to his home. Oh! tell him that'---- 'My dear--my dear,' she replied, but could say no more. Then for a while we sat in silence, with beating hearts. 'I am to purchase the lives of five honest men,' I said presently, 'by my own dishonour. I know very well that it is by my dishonour and my sin that their lives are to be bought. It doth not save me from dishonour that I am first to stand in the church and be married according to the Prayer Book. Nay, does it not make the sin greater and the dishonour more certain that I shall first swear what I cannot ever perform--to love and honour that man?' 'Yes, girl--yes!' said Madam. 'But the sin is mine more than yours. Oh! let me bear the sin upon myself.' 'You cannot, it is my sin and my dishonour; nay, it is a most dreadful wicked thing that I am to do. It is all the sins in one: I do not honour my parents in thus dishonouring myself; I kill myself--the woman that my Robin loved; I steal the outward form which belonged to Robin and give it to another; I live in a kind of adultery. It is truly a terrible sin in the sight of Heaven. Yet I will do it!--I must do it! I love him so that I cannot let him die; rather let me be overwhelmed with shame and reproach if only he can live!'