"A moment, if I may detain you." "You have eluded them!" she cried, entirely off her guard in her surprise at seeing him, and there echoed through her words a note of genuine gladness that almost disconcerted her husband for a moment.

The next instant a crimson flush overspread her pale face, and her eyes were veiled from him, vexation in her heart at having betrayed the lively satisfaction it afforded her to see him safe when she feared him captured already or at least upon the point of capture.
She had admired him almost unconsciously for his daring at the town hall that day, when his strong calm had stood out in such sharp contrast to the fluster and excitement of the men about him; of them all, indeed, it had seemed to her in those stressful moments that he was the only man, and she was--although she did not realize it--in danger of being proud of him.

Then again the thing he had done.

He had come deliberately to thrust his head into the lion's maw that he might save her brother.

It was possible that he had done it in answer to the entreaties which she had earlier feared she had poured into deaf ears; or it was possible that he had done it spurred by his sense of right and justice, which would not permit him to allow another to suffer in his stead--however much that other might be caught in the very toils that he had prepared for Mr.Wilding himself.