“I fear I overrated my power of serving you,” he continued, “and I forgot for the moment how slight was my acquaintance with your family. Manchester, and not Oxford, is my destination, and I shall make for that town to-morrow before you are astir. The country is not nearly so disturbed as I expected to find it, and the roads are perfectly safe; indeed you know the route better than I. This pass is a most potent document and will open every gate. I leave it with you.” He placed the paper on the table before her. “If I might venture to counsel you, I should advise you not to take it into Oxford unless you have some satisfactory plea to account for its possession.” “Have you had anything to eat since you came into York?” Her voice was as sweet as the note of a nightingale. “No,” said Armstrong with a laugh. “I had forgotten about that; a most unusual trick of memory.” “I was too angry with you at the wayside inn, and I could not touch a morsel, so I thus came famished into York. John, see if Mr. Armstrong’s meal is prepared, and ask them to serve it here. I think you Scottish people possess a proverb that it is unfair, or something like that, to speak with a hungry man.” “Yes, many of our sayings pertain to eating. We are an uncouth folk, I fear.” “Indeed you are far from uncouth to-night, Mr. Armstrong. I thought it was we ladies who hurried to the mercers when we came to town, but you lost no time in the delightful quest. That was why I was so deeply offended with you when you came in. You are most ungallant not to have invited me to go with you. I could not have visited shops alone.” “You had no need to visit the shops. Nothing they sell could improve you.” “Am I so hopeless as that?” said the girl, with the sigh of the accomplished coquette, leaning back in her chair and entrancing him with her eyes. Armstrong blushed to the roots of his flaxen hair and stammered,--“I----I meant you are perfect as it is.” She laughed merrily at his confusion, and her mirth came the heartier as she saw she was to accomplish her object; then the laugh was checked as a sudden wave of pity for him surged over her. For all his size he was a very boy in lack of guile, and a shiver ran over her as she pictured what he must think of her when he knew. The sudden tension was relieved by the arrival of old John and the servants carrying a meal hot and savoury, whose incense was a delight to the starving man. “There,” she cried, “sit down opposite me. Put this pass in safe keeping until I seek for it. You will surely not be so cruel as to desert me on the first stage of our journey?” “Madam,” said the bewitched man, “I shall do with eagerness whatever it is your pleasure to ask of me.” CHAPTER II.--RECONCILIATION.