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Suddenly they were within the Palace garden, with its winding, torchlit walks, and the terraces at the side; suddenly again, they had mounted the Palace steps, and the doors were open, and she was confronted with lights and music and shifting, dazzling figures. She stood still, clasped her hands, and gave Haward a piteous look.
"I thank your Excellency for your advice," said Mr. Haward imperturbably, "and will consider of taking it. I wish your Excellency and these merry gentlemen a most complete victory over the mountains, from which conquest I will no longer detain you." He bowed as he spoke, and began to move, slowly and haltingly, across the width of the rocky way to where his negro stood with the two horses. "Mr.
Haward shrugged his shoulders, but would not turn his head, and thereby grant recognition to Jean Hugon, the trader. Did he so, the half-breed might break into speech, provoke a quarrel, make God knew what assertion, what disturbance. To-morrow steps should be taken Ah, the curtain! The silence deepened, and men and women leaned forward holding their breath.
"Yes, Audrey," said Evelyn, and laid a fluttering touch upon the other's lips, then in a moment spoke herself: "You are to remember always, though you love him not, Audrey, that he never was true lover of mine; that now and forever, and though you died to-night, he is to me but an old acquaintance, Mr. Marmaduke Haward of Fair View.
It was not well done of you.... There was a dream I had last summer. I told it to to the one you killed. Now part of the dream has come true.... You never were! Oh, death had been easy pain, for it had left memory, hope! But you never were! you never were!" "I am!" cried Haward ardently. "I am your lover!
A dead silence; then Haward spoke calmly: "I will not take offense, Colonel Byrd. Perhaps I should not take it even were it not as my guest and in my drawing-room that you have so spoken. We will, if you please, consign my portrait to the obscurity from which it has been dragged. In good time here comes Juba to light the candles and set the shadows fleeing."
And her hair: it came to her knees, and mine is just as long. For a long, long time after you went away, when I could not sleep because it was dark, or when I was frightened or Mistress Deborah beat me, I saw them all; but now I see only Molly, Molly lying there dead." There was a silence in the garden, broken presently by Haward. "Ay, Molly," he said absently.
MacLean took up the pardon and held it to a candle. It caught, but before the flame could reach the writing Haward had dashed down the other's hand and beaten out the blaze. "'Slife, Angus, what would you do!" he cried, and, taken unawares, there was angry concern in his voice. "Why, man, 't is liberty!" "I may not accept it," said MacLean, with dry lips. "That letter, also, is useless to me.
Raising her in his arms, Haward bore her to the brink of the stream, laved her face and chafed the small, cold hands. "Now tell me, Audrey," he said at last. "Audrey is your name, isn't it? Cry, if you like, child, but try to tell me." Audrey did not cry. She was very, very tired, and she wanted to go to sleep. "The Indians came," she told him in a whisper, with her head upon his breast.
Haward!" called the Governor. The recreant turned his head. "Your Excellency?" "It was the right foot, was it not?" queried his sometime leader. "Ah, I thought so! Then it were best not to limp with the left." Homeric laughter shook the air; but while Mr. Haward laughed not, neither did he frown or blush. "I will remember, sir," he said simply, and at once began to limp with the proper foot.
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