Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/254

 he believed he could get to St. Malo in a fishing-smack from close by Southampton, at a tiny place where he used to stay with his mother, as a boy, sometimes. He knew a family of fishermen there, who would help him. Ian was sure he could trust them not to tell, even if there should be a hue and cry; and they never did tell. He said he would take his mother's name, O'Reilly, and I must write him, Poste Restante, Cherbourg, where he hoped to go eventually, and would disguise himself as best he could, if things came to the worst. He saw all that happened, in the papers of course, but I couldn't write him till Miss Ricardo and I reached Paris. I told him in a letter I posted then where we meant to stay, and he went to Aosta, and bribed a man named Guiseppe Verdi to let him a carriage and horses, and lend his licence, so that he could be with me for a little while, driving our carriage. Now you know the whole story. Through my fault he will be taken back to England, and tried for murdering Lady Hereward—since you are so cruel and so cowardly."

"Judge not," said Sir Ian.

"What does it matter to you whether I judge or not?"

There are others of more importance than you, in this," he admitted, his eyes far away.

"If only you were not a coward!" she continued to taunt him, hoping to goad the man, perhaps, to