"Oh, but you are not past help. And that is what the Governor bade me say, that it is not too late; that he knows Father Mohl pricked you past endurance, and that he will move heaven and earth to get you off if you will but confess, so that no innocent man may suffer." Neville bowed with ironical courtesy. "You will give me an answer to take to him?" "I have given Governor Brent my answer once." "Oh, think! Do not send me away hastily. Think what is before you,--the chains, the prison, the--the _scaffold_." Neville smiled. "Have you no feeling? How _can_ you smile?" "Was I smiling? I suppose I was following your words and picturing the scenes you called up, especially the last. I was thinking about the fellows who would make the noose fast and swing me off, fancying, poor fools, that they had killed me. How little they would know that the death came off weeks before, and was dealt by one glance from a pair of purple-gray eyes that said in yonder court-room, 'I count you guilty.'" "Stay not to bandy phrases!" interrupted Elinor, swaying a little unsteadily on her feet. "Talk no more of guilt or innocence; but let us look about for another plan of escape since you will not trust Giles Brent. Look, I am near as tall as you. I measured height the evening you stood by me at the fire. You have fair hair, too, like mine. Let us change attire, and you in my cloak shall slip out yonder door." "And you?" "What matter what befalls me? As you say yourself, I have got my death wound already." "But your boy--Cecil." "There are others who will care for him. Mary Brent loves him as her own, and Giles will look to him for my sake." Neville started; he had never thought before of that possibility of Brent's having once loved Elinor, yet why not, when none could be near her and not feel the magic of that charm before which even now his pride was ebbing fast; but this thought stung him to new haughtiness. "You and your cousin have been equally at fault in your judgment of me," he said, dryly. "I am as capable of murdering a priest as of taking shelter behind a woman and leaving her to bear my punishment. If I wished to escape I am not dependent upon your help. There are others, tried and true and firm believers in my innocence, who have offered me freedom, but my honor would not be clear. There is just one way out of the present coil, and that road leads up the scaffold--and down again." "No! No! No! I say it shall not be!" cried Elinor, carried beyond herself in a burst of passion. "You must--you _shall_ get away from this horrible place. Come!" she added with a smile, changing suddenly from anger to sweetness--"come! you have oft said there was naught on earth you would not do for my sake. Now what I ask is such a little thing." "I have heard of Jesuit methods," said Neville, as if speaking to himself. "'Twas a shrewd trick when other shifts failed to tempt a man through the woman he loved, the woman who had once loved him."