"I'm not beaten yet," the girl returned doggedly. "I hoped for something different—yes, I admit that. But her game means as much to her as ours does to us. She's playing it for all it's worth. If she weren't such a wretch, I should have admired her pluck. How she held her ground! Taken by surprise as she was, almost her first thought was whether we had purposely caught her in this trap, or whether she had only an avenging fate to thank for such a terrible and startling coincidence. I saw that, at least, in her eyes and her face, Roger, though I didn't see all I had been looking for. Think what she must have been feeling! She helped to send an innocent man who had loved and trusted her into this exile, worse than death. She thought herself free from him forever, because he was at the other end of the world, dead-alive, in the grave where she buried him. Suddenly she finds herself looking at that grave, unable to escape. At any moment it may open, and the dead appear to accuse her. What a situation!"
"What an imagination!" exclaimed Roger. "Dear child, you have let it carry you away as far from the truth as you've carried this woman from her home—this woman whom you've so audaciously kidnapped."
"Wait," said Virginia, her voice trembling. "I haven't done with her. This is only the first turn of the thumbscrew. She doesn't dream yet of the ordeal she'll have to go through."
"May have to go through," quietly amended Roger Broom.
"You mean—oh, Roger, don't you think we'll succeed in what we've come for so far, so very far?"
Virginia, with tears sparkling in uplifted eyes, was irresistible.
"I hope it, dear," the man who loved and wanted her said, gravely. "I never thought it, you know. But the way hasn't seemed far to me, because I have been with you and the time will not have been wasted for me if we fail, because it has kept me by your side. I shall think, 'I have done what I could, and it has pleased Virginia.'"
"It has made Virginia grateful for all her life long," said the girl softly, "and whatever happens she will never forget. You have done so much already! Disapproving my plan, still you loyally did all you could to forward it. You used your influence to get us the one chance here, without which we could hope to do nothing. You wrote to the French Ambassador in London, the English Ambassador in France, and finally, when our interests were so twisted up in masses of official red-tape that it seemed they could never get disentangled, you ran on to Paris yourself to call on the Minister of the Colonies. If it had not been for the permit you got from him, we might as well have given up coming here, for all the prison doors would have been shut to us. Now, through him, and through you, they will be open, and our first step is clear. All this made me feel hopeful, when we were far away; I felt sure that we should succeed. But now that we have come these thousands of miles in our poor little boat; now that we have arrived at the end of the world and our real work is still before us, my heart suddenly sinks down—down. I'm frightened—I'm almost ill: and your words and your face are so grave, Roger! Your very tenderness and kindness make it worse, for somehow, it's as if you thought there might be a good-bye. It makes me realize that, after all, the greatest danger is to be run by you and George. You have both come for my sake; and—you are going to risk your lives."
"Risk your lives!" repeated a voice; and turning quickly, Virginia and her cousin saw Lady Gardiner, who had lately developed a rather stealthy way of creeping noiselessly behind her friends.
Virginia's mood was not one to promote presence of mind. She was speechless; but Roger stepped in to the breach.