"My lady," was the answer, "you are as free as air. You can leave the carriage this moment, at your will, though I trust you will do nothing so precipitate and foolish as that departure would be." "Then you don't mean to lodge information against me, and have me charged with treason, and imprisoned, and..." "I mean to say..." "But your failure to deliver the warrant? How can you..." "That's easily explained. I was robbed by highwaymen, and..." "But your honour, your reputation?" "I think they will survive even such a strain," he continued easily. "The seven thousand pounds?" "I devote it to the service of your ladyship and your cause. The Earl, your father, can repay it at his convenience." "And what," I asked, in my confusion, "hath brought me this noble, this most generous treatment from an enemy?" "May you never have a worse enemy in all your life, Lady Katharine, than the one who now sits by your side." The revulsion from despair to hope again was too great to be borne. When I realised the full purport of his words, I could scarce contain myself. I could find no words adequate to the situation. My usually ready tongue was paralysed. I knew not with what speech to break the silence. "What hath so greatly changed you?" I inquired at last. "You have," said the man bluntly. I confess I liked the direct simplicity of the answer. Without giving me time for comment, he ran on: "As I told you, I never saw a lad whom I liked better on short acquaintance than I did you last night. That you have turned out to be a woman in the morning, has only strengthened my"--he hesitated--"my regard," he added. And, if that word did not spell what he had called interest had spelled to me before, again I was ignorant of the finer shades of meaning in the language. "Never," said he, "in all my goings out and comings in through this little world, have I met a woman like you. I owe you a score which, I fear me, I shall never pay: that you, a mere girl, should have got the better of me, a tried soldier, fills me with shame and with admiration at the same time. I like your spirit. Should we have met under happier circumstances, it would have been my chief ambition to..." He stopped suddenly. It was most annoying. I was burning to hear the completion of the sentence. "To what, sir?" I asked. "Why don't you finish?" "Madam," said he meaningly, "as a soldier and a gentleman, I put no price upon my services to a woman;" whereat I was discreetly and deliciously silent.