The Marquess gave his horse to the servant, who had ridden to him, and made a sign both to him and Mr. Fox that they ride a little forward.

He bent over the girl (for she was more girl than woman, being scarce eighteen) and put his hand on her shoulder.

“Get up, Mistress,” he said.  “Rise and strive to calm yourself.”

Suddenly his voice had taken a tone which had that in its depths no creature in pain would not understand and answer to.  His keen eye had seen a thing which wrung his heart, it seeming to tell so plainly all the cruel story.

“Come, poor creature,” he said, “let me help you to your feet.”

He put his strong arm about her body, and lifted her as if she had been a child, and finding she was so trembling that she had not strength to support herself, he even carried her to the grass and laid her down upon it.  She had a lovely gipsy face which should have been brilliant with beauty, but was wild and wan and dragged with horrid woe.  Her great roe’s eyes stared at him through big, welling tears of agony.

“You look like some young lord!” she cried. “You have a beautiful face and a sweet voice.  Any woman would believe you if you swore a thing!  What are women to do!  Are you a villain, too—­are you a villain, too?”

“No,” answered he, looking at her straight.  “No, I am not.”

“All men are!” she broke forth, wildly.  “They lie to us—­they trick us—­they swear to us—­and kneel and pray—­and then”—­tossing up her arms with a cry that was a shriek—­“they make us kneel—­and laugh—­laugh—­and laugh at us!”

She threw herself upon the grass and rolled about, plucking at her flesh as if she had indeed gone mad.

“But for you,” she sobbed, “it would be over now, and your horse’s hoofs had stamped me out.  And now ’tis to do again—­for I will do it yet.”

“Nay, you will not, Mistress,” he said, in a still voice, “for your child’s sake.”

He thought, indeed, she would go mad then:  she so writhed and beat herself, that he blamed himself for his words, and knelt by her, restraining her hands.

“’Tis for its sake I would kill myself, and have my face beaten into the bloody dust.  I would kill it—­kill it—­kill it—­more than I would kill myself!”

“Nay, you would not, poor soul,” he said, “if you were not distraught.”

“But I am distraught,” she wailed; “and there is naught but death for both of us.”

’Twas a strange situation for a young man to find himself in, watching by the roadside the hysteric frenzy of a maddened girl; but as he had been unconscious on the day he stood, an unclad man, giving the aid that would save a life, so he thought now of naught but the agony he saw in this poor creature’s awful eyes and heard in her strangled cries.  It mattered naught to him that any passing would have thought themselves gazing upon a scene in a strange story.