"Then you'd better start remembering," Harriet said.
"I've tried. For a year I've tried not to. I don't know which is worse."
"I don't care which is worse." She was shaking now, and furious that she was shaking. "I didn't come here for your conscience, my lord. I came because nobody else would listen. A groom's daughter against Sir Roland Ferrers and the Earl of Brayford. Who should I have gone to? The magistrate?" She laughed, and it was not a good sound. "I came to find the men who were in this yard that night. I've been three weeks finding out which of them will talk and which of them won't. Thorne won't. Kit is frightened of his own shadow. And now you know, and my grandfather is sitting in your library drinking your coffee, and in an hour, or two, you'll walk me up to the house and hand me over to him."
"Will I?"
"Won't you?"
He was silent so long that she thought he would not answer at all.
"I don't know yet," he said at last. "That's the truth. I won't hand you to him this morning. That's all I can promise."
It was not enough. It was so far from enough that it was nearly funny. And yet she found that her eyes were stinging, and she turned away and put her face against the horse's warm neck so that he would not see it.
"That's more than I expected," she said into Absalom's coat.
Behind her she heard the bolt slide back, and the door swing, and his steps going away up the row, slower than they had come.
IV.
Sir Roland had taken his two hours. He had also taken a bath, a shave from Laurence's valet, and three cups of coffee, and when Laurence came into the library at half past eleven the old man was standing at the window with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out at a world that had turned from white to pearl as the fog thinned.
"You have been in the stables," Sir Roland said without turning. "You smell of them."