The forecast as to my lady had its fulfilment while yet the spinetter was striking out the final chords of the minuet.  A lady dropped her kerchief, and I was before her swain in stooping to pick it up.  As I bowed low in returning the bit of lace to its owner, a voice that I had learned to know and love whispered in my ear.

“Make your way to the clock landing of the stair; I must have speech with you,” it said; and for a wonder I was cool enough to obey with no more than a sidelong glance at my lady passing on the arm of another epauletted dangler.

She was before me at the meeting place, and there was no laughing welcome in the deep-welled eyes.  Instead, they flashed me a look that made me wince.

“What folly is this, sir?” she demanded.  “Will you never have done taking my honor and your own life into your reckless hands?”

I bowed my head to the storm.  With the dagger of my miserable errand sticking in my heart there was no fight in me.

“I am but come to do your bidding,” I said, slowly, for the words cost me sorely in the coin of anguish.  “I had your letter, and if you will say how I may find Father Matthieu—­”

She broke me in the midst. “Mon Dieu!” she cried.  “Could I guess that you would come here, into the very noose of the gallows?  Oh, how you do heap scorn on scorn upon me!  Once you made me give silent consent to a falsehood you told; twice, nay, thrice, you have made me disloyal to the king; and now you come again to make me look the world in the face and tell a smiling lie to shield you!  O Holy Mother, pity me!” And with this she put her face in her hands and began to sob.

Now we were only measurably isolated on the stair, and some sense of the hazard we took—­a hazard involving her as well as Richard and myself—­steadied me with a sudden shock.

“Control yourself,” I whispered.  “What is done, is done; and the misery is not all yours to suffer.  Tell me how I may find the priest, and I will do my errand and begone.”

“You can not stay to find him now—­you must not,” she insisted, coming out of the fit of despair with a rebound.  “He is in the town—­indeed, I know not where he is just now.  Can you not endure it a little longer, Captain Ireton?”

“No,” said I, sullenly.  “I have been living a lie all these months to the friend I love best, and I will not do it more.”

Could I be mistaken?  Surely there was a flash not of anger in the eyes that were lifted to mine, and a tremulous note of eagerness in the voice that said:  “Then Dick does not know?—­you have not told him?”

“No; I have told no one.”

“Poor Dick!” she said softly.  “I thought he knew, and I—­”

She paused, and in the pause it flashed upon me how she had wronged my dear lad; how she had thought he would make brazen love to her knowing she was the wife of another.  I thanked God in my heart that I had been able to right him thus far.