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"'But this concerns only myself, and it is of Esmay, my daughter, that I would speak. In a year she will be seventeen, and before that time, if at all, the way must be opened for her to go to her mother's people. I am helpless, except for this one opportunity of committing a message to the hands of Chance, one slender line dropped into the ocean of uncertainty.
Again the head sank forward into the hollowed hands, and only the slow heave of the shoulders made certain that it was a living man who sat there in the silence. Noiselessly closing the door, Esmay regained her room and, all clothed as she was, crept into bed. Nanna stirred sleepily and put out a protecting arm. How blessed the comfort of that strong, warm clasp!
Constans helped Esmay out of the boat, and with stiffened limbs they dragged themselves up the forest way. There was a little shriek, a rush of feet, and swishing skirts, and Nanna's arms were about her sister, while Constans was looking into Piers Minor's honest eyes. Far in the north, a smoke as of a furnace ascended, and the sky was darkened.
But Constans looked only at his enemy, Quinton Edge. "I am ready," he said, coldly. Esmay passed through the long window and so into the drawing-room. To her overly excited senses the signal was already sounding in her ears, and a gradual faintness mounted to her brain, even as water rises about the swimmer advancing through the shingle to the first shock of the surge.
A piece of white cloth had been the signal agreed upon, and a fluttering handkerchief should answer the purpose well enough without being too conspicuous to alien eyes. Nanna still slept, and Esmay, slipping into the hallway, stood listening for a moment. Then she went on boldly; the moon was still high, and she would not need a light.
But he took no account of these smaller things, his eyes being full of Esmay only, and surely that was she who stood there in the shelter of Quinton Edge's arms; now she half turned her head, the better to look into her lord's face, and Constans could trace the outline of her profile the upper lip, so deliciously short, and the exquisite curve of her throat.
His father's blood friends had helped generously in the rehabilitation of his fortunes, and Constans had worked hard with his own hands. Now the task was finished, and he had persuaded Esmay to ride over from the River Barony and pronounce in person upon its merits.
Esmay had reached a side door of the main building; quite naturally she entered and closed the door behind her, while the white-robed figure, after hesitating a moment, walked to a far corner of the house and disappeared. Out of the indefinite distance came the deep-throated bay of a hound. Constans turned and fled for his life. Safely astride the wall coping he looked back.
But for all their mocking he would not forbear, and long after he had passed out of sight Esmay could distinguish the accents of his powerful voice rising above the din that strove to drown it: "Yet three days, and Doom the Mighty is fallen, is fallen!"
He heard Esmay clap her hands, and steps descending from the gallery; then his captor stood before him. He was a boy of Constans's own age, but of shorter, sturdier build. A pleasant, ingenuous face it was, flushed now with the joy of triumph. "Got him," he announced, importantly, to the traitress Esmay, who had retreated towards the door.
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