"Yes; he was waiting for us at Ascension."

"Then it was all arranged?"

"Every detail."

"And this young blackguard is as bad as any of them!"

"Worse," said she, with bitter brevity. Nor had I ever seen her look so hard but once, and that was the night before in the old justice hall, when she told Rattray her opinion of him to his face. She had now the same angry flush, the same set mouth and scornful voice; and I took it finally into my head that she was unjust to the poor devil, villain though he was. With all his villainy I declined to believe him as bad as the others. I told her so in as many words. And in a moment we were arguing as though we were back on the Lady Jermyn with nothing else to do.

"You may admire wholesale murderers and thieves," said Eva. "I do not."

"Nor I. My point is simply that this one is not as bad as the rest. I believe he was really glad for my sake when he discovered that I knew nothing of the villainy. Come now, has he ever offered you any personal violence?"

"Me? Mr. Rattray? I should hope not, indeed!"

"Has he never saved you from any?"

"I-I don't know."

"Then I do. When you left them last night there was some talk of bringing you back by force. You can guess who suggested that-and who set his face against it and got his way. You would think the better of Rattray had you heard what pa.s.sed."

"Should I?" she asked half eagerly, as she looked quickly round at me; and suddenly I saw her eyes fill. "Oh, why will you speak about him?" she burst out. "Why must you defend him, unless it's to go against me, as you always did and always will! I never knew anybody like you-never! I want you to take me away from these wretches, and all you do is to defend them!"

"Not all," said I, clasping her hand warmly in mine. "Not all-not all! I will take you away from them, never fear; in another hour G.o.d grant you may be out of their reach for ever!"

"But where are we to go?" she whispered wildly. "What are you to do with me? All my friends think me dead, and if they knew I was not it would all come out."

"So it shall," said I; "the sooner the better; if I'd had my way it would all be out already."

I see her yet, my pa.s.sionate darling, as she turned upon me, whiter than the full white moon.

"Mr. Cole," said she, "you must give me your sacred promise that so far as you are concerned, it shall never come out at all!"

"This monstrous conspiracy? This cold blooded ma.s.sacre?"

And I crouched aghast.

"Yes; it could do no good; and, at any rate, unless you promise I remain where I am."

"In their hands?"

"Decidedly-to warn them in time. Leave them I would, but betray them-never!"

What could I say? What choice had I in the face of an alternative so headstrong and so unreasonable? To rescue Eva from these miscreants I would have let every malefactor in the country go unscathed: yet the condition was a hard one; and, as I hesitated, my love went on her knees to me, there in the moonlight among the rhododendrons.

"Promise-promise-or you will kill me!" she gasped. "They may deserve it richly, but I would rather be torn in little pieces than-than have them-hanged!"

"It is too good for most of them."

"Promise!"

"To hold my tongue about them all?"

"Yes-promise!"

"Promise!"

"When a hundred lives were sacrificed-"

"Promise!"

"I can't," I said. "It's wrong."

"Then good-by!" she cried, starting to her feet.

"No-no-" and I caught her hand.

"Well, then?"

"I-promise."

CHAPTER XV. FIRST BLOOD

So I bound myself to a guilty secrecy for Eva's sake, to save her from these wretches, or if you will, to win her for myself. Nor did it strike me as very strange, after a moment's reflection, that she should intercede thus earnestly for a band headed by her own mother's widower, prime scoundrel of them all though she knew him to be. The only surprise was that she had not interceded in his name; that I should have forgotten, and she should have allowed me to forget, the very existence of so indisputable a claim upon her loyalty. This, however, made it a little difficult to understand the hysterical grat.i.tude with which my unwilling promise was received. Poor darling! she was beside herself with sheer relief. She wept as I had never seen her weep before. She seized and even kissed my hands, as one who neither knew nor cared what she did, surprising me so much by her emotion that this expression of it pa.s.sed unheeded. I was the best friend she had ever had. I was her one good friend in all the world; she would trust herself to me; and if I would but take her to the convent where she had been brought up, she would pray for me there until her death, but that would not be very long.

All of which confused me utterly; it seemed an inexplicable breakdown in one who had shown such nerve and courage hitherto, and so hearty a loathing for that d.a.m.nable Santos. So completely had her presence of mind forsaken her that she looked no longer where she had been gazing hitherto. And thus it was that neither of us saw Jose until we heard him calling, "Senhora Evah! Senhora Evah!" with some rapid sentences in Portuguese.

"Now is our time," I whispered, crouching lower and clasping a small hand gone suddenly cold. "Think of nothing now but getting out of this. I'll keep my word once we are out; and here's the toy that's going to get us out." And I produced my Deane and Adams with no small relish.

A little trustful pressure was my answer and my reward; meanwhile the black was singing out l.u.s.tily in evident suspicion and alarm.

"He says they are coming back," whispered Eva; "but that's impossible."

"Why?"

"Because if they were he couldn't see them, and if he heard them he would be frightened of their hearing him. But here he comes!"

A shuffling quick step on the path; a running grumble of unmistakable threats; a shambling moonlit figure seen in glimpses through the leaves, very near us for an instant, then hidden by the shrubbery as he pa.s.sed within a few yards of our hiding-place. A diminuendo of the shuffling steps; then a cursing, frightened savage at one end of the rhododendrons, and we two stealing out at the other, hand in hand, and bent quite double, into the long neglected gra.s.s.

"Can you run for it?" I whispered.

"Yes, but not too fast, for fear we trip.'

"Come on, then!"