A sweep of my hat sent the sputtering candle flying from its
barrel head to the farther corner of the vault, and I dropped quickly
behind a row of empty wine-butts to await what should befall.
Had she been a ghost, Mistress Margery would scarce have startled me
more when she swung the door to let me see her. She was gowned in her
best; there was a heightened color in her cheek; her eyes were like
stars. Truly, I do think I never saw her so beautiful as she appeared at
that moment, standing under the massive arch of the doorway with her
candle held high to light the inner gloom.
"This way, Scipio," she said, tripping ahead of the mulatto to point out
the madeira bin. "We shall give my Lord and his gentlemen the best the
Appleby cellar holds to speed their parting." Wherewith she stood aside
to wait whilst he filled his basket with the straw-cased bottles.
At this I saw why she had come. Lord Cornwallis and his gentlemen were
about to take the road, and the wine was wanted for the stirrup-cup.
Trusting my fate to no hand less loyal than her own, she had come
herself with Scipio to stand betwixt me and possible discovery. And her
word to the serving man was also a word to me to let me know my
prisonment was near an end.
I thought it a most generous thing in her; the last of all her many
wifely loyalties; and I would have given much for leave to stand forth
and tell her so. Indeed, when the mulatto had poised his basket upon
his head and vanished, and she was lingering to take a last look around
before she followed him, I was upon the point of speaking.
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