to the end. You put the devil into me. Half an hour ago I was jogging along the road, languid and bored to extinction. And now–-” He laughed outright in actual exultation. “By Jove!” he cried out. “Things like this don’t happen to a man in these dull days! There’s no such luck going about. We’ve gone back five hundred years, and we’ve taken New York with us.” His laugh shut off in the middle, and he got up to thrust his heavy, congested face close to hers. “Here you are, as safe as if you were in a feudal castle, and here is your ancient enemy given his chance—given his chance. Do you think, by the Lord, he is going to give it up? No. To quote your own words, `you may place entire confidence in that.’ “
Exaggerated as it all was, somehow the melodrama dropped away from it and left bare, simple, hideous fact for her to confront. The evil in him had risen rampant and made him lose his head. He might see his senseless folly to-morrow and know he must pay for it, but he would not see it to-day. The place was not a feudal castle, but what he said was insurmountable truth. A ruined cottage on the edge of miles of marsh land, a seldom-trodden road, and night upon them! A wind was rising on the marshes now, and making low, steady moan. Horrible things had happened to women before, one heard of them with shudders when they were recorded in the newspapers. Only two days ago she had remembered that sometimes there seemed blunderings in the great Scheme of things. Was all this real, or was she dreaming that she stood here at bay, her back against the chimney-wall, and this degenerate exulting over her, while Rosy was waiting for her at Stornham—and at this very hour her father was planning his journey across the Atlantic?
“Why did you not behave yourself?” demanded Nigel Anstruthers, shaking her by the shoulder. “Why did you not realise that I should get even with you one day, as sure as you were woman and I was man?”
She did not shrink back, though the pupils of her eyes dilated. Was it the wildest thing in the world which happened to her— or was it not? Without warning—the sudden rush of a thought, immense and strange, swept over her body and soul and possessed her—so possessed her that it changed her pallor to white flame. It was actually Anstruthers who shrank back a shade because, for the moment, she looked so near unearthly.
“I am not afraid of you,” she said, in a clear, unshaken voice. “I am not afraid. Something is near me which will stand between us—something which DIED to-day.”
He almost gasped before the strangeness of it, but caught back his breath and recovered himself.
“Died to-day! That’s recent enough,” he jeered. “Let us hear about it. Who was it?”
“It was Mount Dunstan,” she flung at him. “The church-bells were tolling for him when I rode away. I could not stay to hear them. It killed me—I loved him. You were right when you said it. I loved him, though he never knew. I shall always love him—though he never knew. He knows now. Those who died cannot go away when THAT is holding them. They must stay. Because I loved him, he may be in this place. I call on him–-” raising her clear voice. “I call on him to stand between us.”
He backed away from her, staring an evil, enraptured stare.
“What! There is that much temperament in you?” he said. “That was what I half-suspected when I saw you first. But you have hidden it well. Now it bursts forth in spite of you. Good Lord! What luck—what luck!”
He moved to the door and opened it.
“I am a very modern man, and I enjoy this to the utmost,” he said. “What I like best is the melodrama of it—in connection with Fifth Avenue. I am perfectly aware that you will not discuss this incident in the future. You are a clever enough young woman to know that it will be more to your interest than to mine that it shall be kept exceedingly quiet.”
The white fire had not died out of her and she stood straight.
“What I have called on will be near me, and will stand between us,” she said.
Old though it was, the door was massive and heavy to lift. To open it cost him some muscular effort.
“I am going to the horses now,” he explained before he dragged it back into its frame and shut her in. “It is safe enough to leave you here. You will stay where you are.”
He felt himself secure in leaving her because he believed she could not move, and because his arrogance made it impossible for him to count on strength and endurance greater than his own. Of endurance he knew nothing and in his keen and cynical exultance his devil made a fool of him.
As she heard him walk down the path to the gate, Betty stood amazed at his lack of comprehension of her.
“He thinks I will stay here. He absolutely thinks I will wait until he comes back,” she whispered to the emptiness of the bare room.
Before he had arrived she had loosened her boot, and now she stooped and touched her foot.
“If I were safe at home I should think I could not walk, but I can walk now—I can—I can—because I will bear the pain.”
In such cottages there is always a door opening outside from the little bricked kitchen, where the copper stands. She would reach that, and, passing through, would close it behind her. After that SOMETHING would tell her what to do—something would lead her.
She put her lame foot upon the floor, and rested some of her weight upon it—not all. A jagged pain shot up from it through her whole side it seemed, and, for an instant, she swayed and ground her teeth.
“That is because it is the first step,” she said. “But if I am to be killed, I will die in the open—I will die in the open.”
The second and third steps brought cold sweat out upon her, but she told herself that the fourth was not quite so unbearable, and she stiffened her whole body, and muttered some words while she took a fifth and sixth which carried her into the tiny back kitchen.
“Father,” she said. “Father, think of me now—think of me! Rosy, love me—love me and pray that I may come home. You—you who have died, stand very near!”
If her father ever held her safe in his arms again—if she ever awoke from this nightmare, it would be a thing never to let one’s mind hark back to again—to shut out of memory with iron doors.
The pain had shot up and down, and her forehead was wet by the time she had reached the small back door. Was it locked or bolted—was it? She put her hand gently upon the latch and lifted it without making any sound. Thank God Almighty, it was neither bolted nor locked, the latch lifted, the door opened, and she slid through it into
