"Well, just this," she said gently. "Have you not brought it on yourself in a measure? If you had been more--that is, I mean, if you had not been so----" "So what?" I cried querulously, seeing her hesitate. "Well, so quick to think that it was Matthew Smith--and a pistol," she answered, smiling rather heartlessly. "That is all." "There was a mist," I said. She laughed in her odd way. "Of course, Dick, there was a mist," she agreed. "And you cannot make bricks without straw. And after all you did make bricks in St. James's Square, and it is not for me to find fault. But there is a thing to be done, and it must be done." And her lips closed firmly, after a fashion I remembered, and still remember, having seen it a hundred times since that day, and learned to humour it. "One that must be done!" she continued. "Dick, you will not leave the Duke to be ruined by Matthew Smith? You will not lie here and let those rogues work their will on him? Sir John has denounced him." "And may denounce me!" I said, aghast at the notion. "May denounce me," I continued with agitation. "_Will_ denounce me. If it was not the Duke who was at Ashford, it was I!" "And who are you?" she retorted, with a look that withered me. "Who will care whether you met Sir John at Ashford or not? King William--call him Dutchman, boor, drunkard, as it's the fashion this side, call him I say what you will--at least he flies at high game, and does not hawk at mice!" "Mice?" "Ay, mice!" she answered with a snap of her teeth--and she looked all over the little vixen she could be. "For what are we? What are we now? Still more, what are we if we leave the Duke to his enemies, leave him to be ruined and disgraced, leave him to pay the penalty, while you, the cause of all this, lie here--lie safe and snug? For shame, Dick! For shame!" she continued with such a thrill in her voice that the pigeons feeding behind her fluttered up in alarm, and two or three nuns looked out inquisitively. I had my own thoughts and my own feelings about my lord, as he well knew in after years. I challenge any to say that I lacked either respect or affection for him. But a man's wits move more slowly than a woman's, and the news came on me suddenly. It was no great wonder if I could not in a moment stomach the prospect of returning to risk and jeopardy, to the turmoil from which I had been so long freed, and the hazards of a life and death struggle. In the political life of twenty years ago men carried their necks to market. Knowing that I might save the Duke and suffer in his place--the fate of many a poor dependant; or might be confronted with Smith; or brought face to face with Ferguson; or perish before I reached London in the net in which my lord's own feet were caught, I foresaw not one but a hundred dangers; and those such as no prudent man could be expected to regard with equanimity, or any but a harebrained girl would encounter with a light heart.