After a time she said:  “Why did you make me marry you, Monsieur John?  Oh, I have racked my brain so for the answer to that question.  I know you said it was to save my honor.  But surely we have paid a heavier penalty than any that could have been laid upon me had you left me as I was.”

“I was but a short-sighted fool, and no prophet,” I rejoined, striving hard to keep the bitterness of soul out of my words.  “At the moment it seemed the only way out of the pit of doubt into which my word to Colonel Tarleton had plunged you.  But there was another motive.  You saw the paper I signed that night, with Lieutenant Tybee and your father’s factor for the witnesses?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what it was?”

“No.”

“’Twas the last will and testament of one John Ireton, gentleman, in which he bequeathed to Margery, his wife, his estate of Appleby Hundred.”

“Appleby Hundred?” she echoed.  “But my father—­”

“Your father holds but a confiscator’s title, and it, with many others, has been voided by the Congress of North Carolina.  Richard Jennifer is my dear friend, and you—­”

“I begin to understand—­a little,” she said, and now her voice was low and she would not look at me.  Then, in the same low tone:  “But now—­now you would be free again?”

“How can you ask?  As matters stand, I have marred your life and Dick’s most hopelessly.  Do you wonder that I have been reckless of the hangman? that I care no jot for my interfering life at this moment, save as the taking of it may involve you and Richard?”

“No, surely,” she said, still speaking softly.  And now she gave me her eyes to look into, and the hardness was all melted out of them.  “Did you come here, under the shadow of the gallows, to tell me this, Monsieur John?”

“There shall be no more half-confidences between us, dear lady.  I had my leave of General Morgan on the score of our need for better information of Lord Cornwallis’s designs; but I should have come in any case—­wanting the leave, my commission as a spy, or any other excuse.”

“To tell me this?”

“To do the bidding of your letter, and to say that whilst I live I shall be shamed for the bitter words I gave you when I was sick.”

“I mind them not; I had forgotten them,” she said.

“But I have not forgotten, nor ever shall.  Will you say you forgive me, Margery?”

“For thinking I had poisoned you?  How do you know I did not?”

“I have seen Scipio.  Will you shrive me for that disloyalty, dear lady?”

“Did I not say I had forgotten it?”

“Thank you,” I said, meaning it from the bottom of my heart.  “Now one thing more, and you shall send me to Father Matthieu.  ’Tis a shameful thing to speak of, but the thought of it rankles and will rankle till I have begged you to add it to the things forgotten.  That morning in your dressing-room—­”