Some hours elapsed before Rose Westel could escape unnoticed to the hiding-place by the river. As Annys stepped forth, Rose's heart sank within her, for his face was set and hard. Could she accomplish her purpose? Was this unbending monk the passionate lover she had once known?

"I was sent for," he began coldly, "in the name of my people, or I should not have come. Delay me not, there is much work to be done."

"I will be brief," she said guardedly. "They are about to attack the Manor House where the Baron has gone. I tried to keep him here, I told him his life was in danger, but he only laughed at me for my pains."

A swift gleam of indignation shot over his drawn face.

"Hast sent then for me to save thy lover, for me?" he demanded.

"Nay, I have sent for thee to save my soul," she said, with a pitiful ghost of her old smile, her old spirit.

"It is not given a priest of God to shrive an unrepentant harlot," was his impetuous answer.

"You are even as other priests, who speak ever by rote," flashed from her angrily. "An unrepentant harlot, if you will, but a better woman than that haughty, self-willed girl the world called 'good.' I fled from the sight of suffering in others, I cared only for my own pleasures, for no one save myself. Now go about the Castle and ask of Rose Westel, discover what kind of name she bears, count the friends who love her and whom she serves, fit the deeds she does with the selfish aloofness of that girl I was, and tell me which was the better woman. Ay, look at me, look at me," she ended passionately, "is it not written on my face?"

He looked gravely down upon her. Ah, not lightly had she loved, either! Love indeed had given her a soul.

"Yes, the heart is a great teacher," he said softly.

"It is not possible that the good Father can cast one to hell whose sole sin was in overmuch loving," she said.

"Whose sole sin was in overmuch loving." How often had he prayed that might be so.

"No," she repeated, with a certain sad dignity, "I have not sent for you because I sinned through love, but because I sinned through hate."

"Through hate? How?"

She pressed two trembling fingers on her burning eyelids for an instant, and then kneeled before him and looked up piteously into his hardened face.

"I never knew that one could suffer as I suffered when that woman came—that woman to lie where I have lain, to kiss where I have kissed—that woman—ah!—I was wild—out of my senses when I sought John Kyrkeby and whispered to him that I was forced by the Baron."

He was about to speak, but she silenced him with a gesture. "It was a lie, a base lie," she said, reddening with shame; "but heed not that. John Kyrkeby left me hot with anger to stir up his fellows against the Baron."

"Ah, girl," he said sadly, "think not your words will be answerable for what follows. The people have more—far more against the Baron de Leaufort than the undoing of one maid. He has been a hard taskmaster, and has ever refused the quit-rent."

"The very words John Kyrkeby spake when I went again to him wild at my own deed. He said to me then that no one could prevent the men from marching on the Manor save that Robert Annys would come before them again as their leader. He alone could keep their eyes fixed on Blackheath.

"I was mad, mad," she continued, now walking up and down in agony, "mad, mad. I thought only that she would not have him. I forgot that he—Edmond—must suffer. They will kill him, they will burn the Manor House over his head."

"I cannot find it in my heart to blame thee for bringing me in hopes to save thy lover," he said gently, "yet I should not have come had the message read, 'My lover needs thee,'—remember it was, 'Thy people need thee!'"

She clung to his gown.

"Nay, then, thy people do need thee. Think, will it help the people's Cause that they come to the King with hands reddened in the blood of his nobles? Remember, de Leaufort is a kinsman of the King."

"True, true," he said, "I will go, not to save thy lover. I go, but to save the people—if I can—from themselves. I cannot promise thee I shall be in time, but if word of mine can serve, there shall be no further violence."

Holding his cross high up over his head, he gazed at it an instant outlined against the flaming sun, and took a quick step forward.

"In Thy name! In Thy name! I go! I go!"

But she detained him yet an instant. Throwing herself once more before him, she bent her head low to his sandals.

"Pray for me, pray for me. To-morrow my mother's death-bed shall be mine. Remember in thy prayers poor Rose Westel."

At first he looked down upon her wildly, as if in his eagerness to go he had forgot her very existence. He heard only her prayer for remembrance. A fierce reproach swept into his eyes.

"Remember thee in my prayers? Woman, the one prayer I have known since first I set eyes on thee has been that I might forget thee!"

And with his face into the sunset he was gone.