"You understand very little except coquetry and the proper disposition of a ruffle. Yet this is simple. My horse is tied at the postern. Mount--astride, mind. You know the way to the Vicarage, so does the horse; you will find that posturing half-brother of mine at the Vicarage. Tell Frank what has happened. Tell him to row you to the mainland; tell him to conduct you to Colonel Denstroude's. Then you must shift for yourself; but Denstroude is a gentleman, and Denstroude would protect Beelzebub if he came to him a fugitive from Vincent Floyer. Now do you understand?"
"Yes," said Lady Allonby, and seated herself before the fire,--"yes, I understand. I am to slip away in the darkness and leave you here to answer for Lord Rokesle's death--to those devils. La, do you really think me as base as that?"
Now Simon Orts was kneeling at her side. The black cloak enveloped her from head to foot, and the turned-up collar screened her sunny hair; in the shadow of the broad hatbrim you could see only her eyes, resplendent and defiant, and in them the reflection of the vaulting flames. "You would stay, Anastasia?"
"I will not purchase my life at the cost of yours. I will be indebted to you for nothing, Simon Orts."
The Vicar chuckled. "Nor appeared Less than archangel ruined," he said. "No, faith, not a whit less! We are much of a piece, Anastasia. Do you know--if affairs had fallen out differently--I think I might have been a man and you a woman? As it is--" Kneeling still, his glance devoured her. "Yes, you would stay. And you comprehend what staying signifies. 'Tis pride, your damnable pride, that moves you,--but I rejoice, for it proves you a brave woman. Courage, at least, you possess, and this is the first virtue I have discovered in you for a long while. However, there is no necessity for your staying. The men of Usk will not hurt Simon Orts."
She was very eager to believe this. Lady Allonby had found the world a pleasant place since her widowhood. "They will not kill you? You swear it, Simon?"
"Why, the man was their tyrant. They obeyed him--yes, through fear. I am their deliverer, Anastasia. But if they found a woman here--a woman not ill-looking--" Simon Orts snapped his fingers. "Faith, I leave you to conjecture," said he.