"Why should you?" she asked. "I am a stranger to you. Our pathways have strangely crossed each other, and you have been kind to me. For this I thank you, oh, so much! but we can never meet again. Our paths lie apart. I dare not show my face to my country people. I am a Dissenter. My father is hated of the new king, while I"--here her voice grew hoarse and harsh--"I attempted to kill the man whose actions brought him back. Do you realize that, Master Rashcliffe? Since that day I have been hunted as though I were a mad dog. Since that day I have had to adopt all sorts of disguises. I have had to hide in secret places, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of a man who--who made me do his will, even when my heart grew sick at the thought of it." "Then you need a friend all the more. I know nothing of the history of your marriage with Sir Charles Denman, and----" "Do not seek to know it," she cried passionately. "I shall escape now. Since God hath led you to deliver me from Bedford Gaol, even when hope had died within my heart, will He forsake me now?" "No, but if you need me?" I cried. "Will you not promise to send for me if you need me?" "Is that your desire? Knowing what you know of me, do you wish to endanger yourself for me?" "Does not my presence in Bedford to-night prove it?" "But how may that be? Where can I send?" "There is a man near St. Paul's Cross who keeps an inn called the _Virgin Queen_," I made answer. "He was once a servant of my father's. His name is Caleb Bullen. I will speak to him directly I return to London, and if you send a letter to me in care of him it will surely reach me." I saw that she looked steadily towards me as I spoke, and I thought she hesitated. "When I need help I will send to you. But stay! I may need protection from my--husband. Will you shield me from him?" She said this bitterly, and as she spoke my heart became hard. Why should I seek to befriend the wife of another man? Was not her place at his side? Then I remembered the way he spoke to her in the inn at Folkestone, and while I pitied the woman, I felt like hating the man. "I will help you against all who would harm you," I said. She grasped my hand convulsively. "God protect you and preserve you," she said; and then before I realized what she had done, I saw her speeding swiftly across the meadows towards the trees she had spoken of. I started to follow her, but deemed such an action to be unwise; therefore I stopped and listened. Full five minutes did I wait, but not a sound did I hear. She had disappeared from my view as though she were a shadow of the night. For a time she seemed but the creature of one's dreams, and the events of the night only the imaginings of a disordered mind. Yet I knew it was not so.