“You need not say so much,” I retorted, bowing low.  “You have spoken now and then of certain duties binding upon those who are knotted up, ever so loosely, in the marriage bond; I have my part in these as well as you, Mistress Margery.”

She bit her lip and was upon the edge of tears.  I saw what I had done and would curse the masterless tongue that must needs add its word-thong to the night’s whip of scourgings.

When she spoke again it was to say:  “This is your own house, Captain Ireton; what will you do?”

“One question first, is Richard Jennifer safe?”

“He is.”

“Then, by your good leave, I shall do what I came to do.”

She bent her head in acquiescence.

“You will find the—­the person whom you wish to see in your old room in the north gable.  Shall I have Anthony light you up?”

“No; I can find the way.”

My hand was on the stair rail when the cruel irony of it struck me like a blow.  She had planned the loosing of the bond in the very room where we had knelt to take the good father’s blessing upon it.

I stepped back, stumbled, I should say, for a curious weakness had come upon me, and drew her arm in mine.

“We will go together, if you please, my lady.  ’Tis only just to me that you should hear what I must say to Father Matthieu.”

And so, dear heart! she bore with me to the last; and together we climbed the stair to come into the upper corridor with the room of destiny at its farther end.

We came as far as the door; I mind it perfectly, for I remember marking that the wooden bar my father had put upon it was gone, and the iron brackets as well.  But whilst I was groping for the latch there came a taste of blood in my mouth, and I heard my dear lady’s voice as if she were calling to me across the eternal abysses.  “Monsieur John!—­you are hurt!” And then, from a still remoter distance:  “Oh, Father Matthieu—­Dick! come quickly!  He is dying!”

LI

IN WHICH THE GOOD CAUSE GAINS A CONVERT

Which one of you, my dears, faring across the frontier of the shadow land of dreams into the no less mysterious country of the real, can not recall the struggle of the waking senses to knot up the gossamer filament of the night’s fantasies with the coarser web of reality?

For a time, longer or shorter as the dream thread holds, the vagaries of the night are shuttled into the warp of life.  But presently comes the master-weaver Reason to point out this or that fantastic pattern; to bid the ear listen to the measured clacking of the day-loom, and the eye to mark that the web of reality has grown never an inch for all the shuttlings of the sleeping-time.  Whereupon, full-blood consciousness regains her sway, and you sigh, gladly or sorrowfully, and say, “Dear God, ’twas but a dream I dreamed!”

Some such awakening came to me on a day whereof I knew not the name or its number in the calendar.