“Oh! but it can be done; never doubt it.  I will go, not as a woman, but as a man.  I have planned all the details while sitting here.  To-morrow I will send to Bristol a sum of money asking a separate room in the ship for a young nobleman who wishes to go to New Spain incognito, and will go aboard just before they sail.  I will buy a man’s complete outfit, and will practice being a man before you and Sir Edwin.”  Here she blushed so that I could see the scarlet even in the gathering gloom.  She continued:  “As to my escape, I can go to Windsor, and then perhaps on to Berkeley Castle, over by Reading, where there will be no one to watch me.  You can leave at once, and there will be no cause for them to spy upon me when you are gone, so it can be done easily enough.  That is it; I will go to my sister, who is now at Berkeley Castle, the other side of Reading, you know, and that will make a shorter ride to Bristol when we start.”

The thought, of course, could not but please Brandon, to whom, in the warmth of Mary’s ardor, it had almost begun to offer hope; and he said musingly:  “I wonder if it could be done?  If it could—­if we could reach New Spain, we might build ourselves a home in the beautiful green mountains and hide ourselves safely away from all the world, in the lap of some cosy valley, rich with nature’s bounteous gift of fruit and flowers, shaded from the hot sun and sheltered from the blasts, and live in a little paradise all our own.  What a glorious dream! but it is only a dream, and we had better awake from it.”

Brandon must have been insane!

“No! no!  It is not a dream,” interrupted downright, determined Mary; “it is not a dream; it shall be a reality.  How glorious it will be!  I can see our little house now nestling among the hills, shaded by great spreading trees with flowers and vines and golden fruit all about it, rich plumaged birds and gorgeous butterflies.  Oh!  I can hardly wait.  Who would live in a musty palace when one has within reach such a home, and that, too, with you?”

Here it was again.  I thought that interview would be the death of me.

Brandon held his face in his hands, and then looking up said:  “It is only a question of your happiness, and hard as the voyage and your life over there would be, yet I believe it would be better than life with Louis of France; nothing could be so terrible as that to both of us.  If you wish to go, I will try to take you, though I die in the attempt.  There will be ample time to reconsider, so that you can turn back if you wish.”

Her reply was inarticulate, though satisfactory; and she took his hand in hers as the tears ran gently down her cheeks; this time tears of joy—­the first she had shed for many a day.

In the Siren country again without wax!  Overboard and lost!

Yes, Brandon’s resolution not to see Mary was well taken, if it could only have been as well kept.  Observe, as we progress, into what the breaking of it led him.