"My signature? Ah! And what possible inducement can you offer me for my signature?"

"Why, what you most desire."

"What? My freedom?"

"Yes."

"Very well. Will you drive me to the village at once?"

Leon hesitated.

"Well, not just at once, you know. You must remain here a short time, and go through certain formalities and routine work, and attest certain things before a lawyer."

Edith smiled.

"What a simpleton you must still think me! How easy you must think it is to impose upon me! Perhaps you think me so credulous, or so much in the habit of confiding in you, that no such thing as doubt ever enters my mind."

Leon glared angrily at her.

"I tell you I must have it," he cried, in excited tones. "I must have it--by fair means or foul."

"But of the two ways I _presume_ you have a preference for the latter," said Edith.

"I tell you I must and will have it," reiterated Leon.

"I don't see how you can get my signature very well--unless you forge it; but then I suppose that will not stand in your way."

"Now by all that is most holy," cried Leon, vehemently, "you make me hate you even worse than I hate Wiggins."

"Really, these feelings of yours are a subject in which I do not take the smallest interest."

"I tell you," cried Leon, struggling to repress his rage, "if you sign this paper you shall be free."

"Let me be free first, and then I will think about it."

"If you get free you'll refuse to sign," said Leon.

"But if I were to sign first I should never be free."

"You shall be free. I promise you on the honor of a gentleman," cried Leon, earnestly.

"I'm afraid," said Edith, in a tone of quiet contempt, "that the security is of too little value."

Leon looked at her with fury in his eyes.

"You are driving me to the most desperate measures," he cried.

"It seems to me that your measures have all along been as desperate as they well can be."

"I swear by all that's holy," thundered Leon, "that I'll tame you yet.

I'll bring you into subjection."

"Ah! then in that case," said Edith, "my comfort will be that the subjection can not last long."

"Will it not ?" asked Leon.

"No, it will not, as you very well know," said Edith, in cold, measured tones, looking steadfastly at him with what seemed like a certain solemn warning. She rose as she said this, still looking at Leon, while he also rose in a state of vehement excitement.

"What do you meant" he cried. "You look as blood-thirsty as an a.s.sa.s.sin."

"I may yet become one," said Edith, gloomily, "if this lasts much longer. You have eyes, but you will not see. You treat me like some silly, timid child, while I have all the time the spirit of a man. This can only end in one way. Some one must die!"

Leon looked at her in astonishment. Her voice and her look showed that she was in earnest, but the fragile beauty of her slender form seemed to belie the dark meaning of her words.

"I came with a fair offer," said he, in a voice hoa.r.s.e with pa.s.sion.

"You!" said Edith, in cold scorn; "you with a fair offer! Fairness and honor and justice and truth, and all such things, are altogether unknown to such as you."

At this Leon frowned that peculiar frown of his, and gnawed his mustache in his rage.

"I have spared you thus far," said he--"I have spared you; but now, by Heaven, you shall feel what it is to have a master!"

"You!" she cried--"you spared me? If I have escaped any injury from you, it has been through my own courage and the cowardice of your own heart.

You my master! You will learn a terrible lesson before you become that!"

"I have spared you," cried Leon, now beside himself with rage--"I have spared you, but I will spare you no longer. After this you shall know that what I have thus far done is as nothing to that which is yet before you."

"What you have done!" said Edith, fixing her great wrathful eyes more sternly upon Leon, with a look of deadly menace, and with burning intensity of gaze, and speaking in a low tone that was tremulous with repressed indignation--"what you have done! Let me tell you, Captain Dudleigh, your heart's blood could never atone for the wrongs you have done me! Beware, Sir, how you drive me to desperation. You little know what I have in my mind to do. You have made me too familiar with the thought of death!"

At these words Leon stared at her in silence. He seemed at last to understand the full possibility of Edith's nature, and to comprehend that this one whom he threatened was capable, in her despair, of making all his threats recoil on his own head: He said nothing, and in a few moments afterward she left the room.

As she went out of the door she encountered Hugo. He started as she came noiselessly upon him. He had evidently been listening to all that had been said. At this specimen of the way in which she was watched, though it really showed her no more than what she had all along known, there arose in Edith's mind a fresh sense of helplessness and of peril.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDITH SET TO WORK. ]

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

THE FUGITIVE AND THE PURSUER.

On returning to her own room from that interview with Leon, Edith sat for a long time involved in thought. It was evident to her now that her situation was one full of frightful peril. The departure of Wiggins, of which she was aware, seemed to afford additional danger. Between him and Leon there had been what seemed to her at least the affectation of dislike or disagreement, but now that he was gone there remained no one who would even pretend to interpose between herself and her enemy. Even if Mrs. Dunbar had been capable of a.s.sisting her against Leon, Edith knew that no reliance could be placed upon her, for she had openly manifested a strong regard for him.

This departure of Wiggins, which thus seemed to make her present position more perilous, seemed also to Edith to afford her a better opportunity than any she had known since her arrival of putting into execution her long-meditated project of flight. True, there was still the same difficulty which had been suggested once before--the want of money--but Edith was now indifferent to this. The one thing necessary was to escape from her new perils. If she could but get out of the Dalton grounds, she hoped to find some lawyer who might take up her cause, and allow her enough to supply her modest wants until that cause should be decided. But liberty was the one thought that eclipsed all others in her estimation; and if she could but once effect her escape from this horrible place, it seemed to her that all other things would be easy.