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“Yes,” said Lady Allonby, and seated herself before the fire,–“yes, I understand. I am to slip away in the darkness and leave you here to answer for Lord Rokesle’s death–to those devils. La, do you really think me as base as that?”

Now Simon Orts was kneeling at her side. The black cloak enveloped her from head to foot, and the turned-up collar screened her sunny hair; in the shadow of the broad hatbrim you could see only her eyes, resplendent and defiant, and in them the reflection of the vaulting flames. “You would stay, Anastasia?”

“I will not purchase my life at the cost of yours. I will be indebted to you for nothing, Simon Orts.”

The Vicar chuckled. “Nor appeared Less than archangel ruined,” he said. “No, faith, not a whit less! We are much of a piece, Anastasia. Do you know–if affairs had fallen out differently–I think I might have been a man and you a woman? As it is–” Kneeling still, his glance devoured her. “Yes, you would stay. And you comprehend what staying signifies. ‘Tis pride, your damnable pride, that moves you,–but I rejoice, for it proves you a brave woman. Courage, at least, you possess, and this is the first virtue I have discovered in you for a long while. However, there is no necessity for your staying. The men of Usk will not hurt Simon Orts.”

She was very eager to believe this. Lady Allonby had found the world a pleasant place since her widowhood. “They will not kill you? You swear it, Simon?”

“Why, the man was their tyrant. They obeyed him–yes, through fear. I am their deliverer, Anastasia. But if they found a woman here–a woman not ill-looking–” Simon Orts snapped his fingers. “Faith, I leave you to conjecture,” said he.

They had both risen, he smiling, the woman in a turbulence of hope and terror. “Swear to it, Simon!”

“Anastasia, were affairs as you suppose them, I would have a curt while to live. Were affairs as you suppose them, I would stand now at the threshold of eternity. And I swear to you, upon my soul’s salvation, that I have nothing to fear. Nothing will ever hurt me any more.”

“No, you would not dare to lie in the moment of death,” she said, after a considerable pause. “I believe you. I will go. Good-bye, Simon.” Lady Allonby went toward the door opening into the corridor, but turned there and came back to him. “I shall never see you again. And, la, I think that I rather hate you than otherwise, for you remind me of things I would willingly forget. But, Simon, I wish we had gone to live in that little cottage we planned, and quarrelled over, and never built! I think we would have been happy.”

Simon Orts raised her hand to his lips. “Yes,” said he, “we would have been happy. I would have been by this a man doing a man’s work in the world, and you a matron, grizzling, perhaps, but rich in content, and in love opulent. As it is, you have your flatterers, your gossip, and your cards; I have my gin. Good-bye, Anastasia.”

“Simon, why have you done–this?”

The Vicar of Heriz Magna flung out his hands in a gesture of impotence. “I dare confess now that which even to myself I have never dared confess. I suppose the truth of it is that I have loved you all my life.”

“I am sorry. I am not worth it, Simon.”

“No; you are immeasurably far from being worth it. But one does not justify these fancies by mathematics. Good-bye, Anastasia.”

V

Holding the door ajar, the Vicar of Heriz Magna heard a horse’s hoofs slap their leisurely way down the hillside. Presently the sound died and he turned back into the hall.

“A brave woman, that! Oh, a trifling, shallow-hearted jilt, but a brave creature!

“I had to lie to her. She would have stayed else. And perhaps it is true that, in reality, I have loved her all my life,–or in any event, have hankered after the pink-and-white flesh of her as any gentleman might. Pschutt! a pox on all lechery says the dying man,–since it is now necessary to put that strapping yellow-haired trollop out of your mind, Simon Orts–yes, after all these years, to put her quite out of your mind. Faith, she might wheedle me now to her heart’s content, and my pulse would never budge; for I must devote what trivial time there is to hoping they will kill me quickly. He was their god, that man!”

Simon Orts went toward the dead body, looking down into the distorted face. “And I, too, loved him. Yes, such as he was, he was the only friend I had. And I think he liked me,” Simon Orts said aloud, with a touch of shy pride. “Yes, and you trusted me, didn’t you, Vincent? Wait for me, then, my Lord,–I shall not be long. And now I’ll serve you faithfully. I had to play the man’s part, you know,–you mustn’t grudge old Simon his one hour of manhood. You wouldn’t, I think. And in any event, I shall be with you presently, and you can cuff me for it if you like–just as you used to do.”

He covered the dead face with his handkerchief, but in the instant he drew it away. “No, not this coarse cambric. You were too much of a fop, Vincent. I will use yours–the finest linen, my Lord. You see old Simon knows your tastes.”

He drew himself erect exultantly.

“They will come at dawn to kill me; but I have had my hour. God, the man I might have been! And now–well, perhaps He would not be offended if I said a bit of a prayer for Vincent.”

So the Vicar of Heriz Magna knelt beside the flesh that had been Lord Rokesle, and there they found him in the morning.