She looked at him with a little surprise. "Nay, I saw him not, nor heard him. I had no trouble. But you will not tell?"
Her wide-open eyes, round and large and of the deepest blue, were turned straight upon his face, as if they meant to leave him not till they should have a direct answer.
[Illustration: "'SIR, I THANK YOU FOR WHAT YOU DID THAT NIGHT.'"]
"Why--mistress," he blundered, and then dropped his own gaze to where he was beginning to scrape the gravel awkwardly with his shoe, "why need you ask? Did I not protect your secret that night?"
"Then why do you hesitate now?" she demanded, with a sudden unconcealed mistrust. "Oh, Master Holyday, what is in your mind? Why have you drawn me hither to speak with you alone? Why do you make a doubt of promising not to betray me? Come, sir, I have little time; they will soon be wondering where I am; either promise me, or I myself will tell them, and then, by St. Anne, I care not--"
There was a threat of weeping in her voice and face, and Ravenshaw impulsively threw up his hand, and said:
"Nay, fear not. I will not tell. I give my word."
Trouble fled from her face, and a smile of gratitude made her appear doubly charming.
Ravenshaw cleared his throat, without reason, and tried to meet her glance without seeing her, if that had been possible.
"You are a happy maid," quoth he, settling down to a disagreeable business. "'Tis proven that you may play the runaway for an hour or two, when you wish, and none be the wiser. There's many a maid would give her best gown thrice over, for that assurance."
"Troth, it serves me nothing," she said, with a forlornness he could not understand. "An I were to play the runaway again, whither should I run?"
He thought for an instant of going into the mystery of her former desire to run away; but he decided that, as time pressed, it were better to hold to the present design.
"Whither, indeed?" quoth he. "Faith, London has no lack of pleasant bowers, where beauty may hear itself praised by the lips of love. Sure, you look as if I talked Greek to you. Certainly you are wont to hear yourself admired?"
"Oh!" she murmured, at a loss, with a smile, and a blush of confusion.
"Troth, now," said he; "confess you enjoy to be admired."