CHAPTER XI.
I UNDERGO AN ORDEAL; I PLAY WITH A FIRE.
I suppose something must have altered in my
face in my effort to conceal the strange emotion
that I suffered. For a soft look crept in his eye,
and he said in that rich voice that had impressed me
in the stable on the first night of our acquaintancy,
"My Lady Barbara, I have not hurt you? If once I pained my benefactress I could ne'er forgive myself."
"N-n-no," I stammered, for to be quite plain his tenderness played a greater havoc with me than his strength.
"I believe I have," he says, and a tear was in his voice, and such a deal of heaven in his look that I could not meet it, and had to gaze upon the ground.
"N-n-no," I stammered, and hated him for being a beggar and a fugitive, and Mrs. Polly Emblem for being in the room. And not less did I hate myself for being weak enough to forget my training and my sphere of life.
"Captain," I sighed, in the voice of spring among the trees, "destroy that blue document of
