“Risk for risk—all is risk!… My lips have not touched it since the pestilence came so nigh them. Di, hark to me, Di. When you want my help this day, you have but to whistle, I’ll hear and help.… I go. Yet not so far but what I can guard my own.”

She stood, her head averted; her foot beating the floor, image of scornful defiance. He slipped down from his perch to the ledge and poised himself yet a second, looking in on her as when he had first appeared:—

“Thou, in the Rakehell’s hands—and the world gone mad around thee…! Ah, shall’t whistle sooner than thou thinkest!”

She wheeled to silence him; he was gone. A bitter conflict rose in her mind as she stood staring at the blank window space. In spite of herself, the memory of his look, of the deep earnestness of his voice, began to shake her sense of security.… He thought he had the sickness, yet he came to warn her!… Another man would have had little reck of aught but himself, with that shadow of doom spread over him.… Yet he hated Rockhurst—oh, how he hated him!—and had he not all but killed Rockhurst’s son for aspiring to her?… With the perspicacity of his relentless love for her, he had read her secret. Reason enough, then, that he should strive to poison her mind against one whom she knew so noble.… Yet again, unscrupulous, daring, cruel even in his very love for her, Ratcliffe had taken piteous pains to guard her against himself. Now, he was lurking in the lanes below, for her sake, instead of hying him to the nearest physician, so urgent did he believe her danger.… Was there, could there be danger?

Her ear caught the sound of the key in the lock; she knew it was Rockhurst returning. On a sudden impulse she picked up the whistle and thrust it into her bodice. Her heart beat to suffocation as she heard his hand on the door.

III
NEMESIS

Rockhurst came in slowly and stood a moment, contemplating Diana before he spoke. The bronze of his face was singularly blanched; his grave eye was alight with a threatening of fire. Then he spoke, quickly:—

“I have beaten the neighbourhood. Whitehall is as a desert, the name of the King itself an empty sound. The whole town is fled, dying or dead.” He took her hand, clasping it with a pressure so fierce as almost to draw a cry from her. “For love or money, it is impossible to obtain horse, coach, or man.”

Her fluttering heart slowed down to the dull beat of misery; she sought to draw her hand from his.