She gripped the rail of the curricle, not to give herself courage—for she had no thought there was anything to fear—but to brace herself the better against any further presumption. She was quite unprepared, therefore, when he turned his bloods away from the road leading to Standish Hall, and, with a flourish of the whip, sent them helter-skelter up the hill on the London causeway.
The cry she gave was one more of anger than of fear. A solitary pedestrian, coming at a swinging pace along the road which led from Sir Jasper’s residence, heard it, and beheld the curricle as it topped the hill, fantastically silhouetted in black against the moonlit sky. He gave an answering shout, and started running. But he had as much chance of overtaking the gig as if it had been a bird on the flight. He gave up, panting, after a yard or two, stamped his foot, shook his fist at the radiant sky, and started running again in the opposite direction.
“Where are you taking me to?”
Sir Jasper’s teeth and his eyeballs flashed horribly in the silver light as he smiled upon Pamela.
“You’ll be uncommon grateful to me one day, my pretty little milliner.”
“Good Heaven, what do you mean, sir?”
“I dare swear you ain’t so far from being grateful now. Oh, aye! ’Tis the regular thing to set up a hullaballoo, but I’m not to be taken in by any tushery, and so I tell you! You may scream till you’re blue, there ain’t a soul on the roads to hear you, and as for kicking, ’tain’t easy on a curricle, so, like a girl of sense let’s pretend you’ve had your vapours, and you and I will have a glorious time together. Why, who was talking of silver feathers? ’Tis golden chains I’ll give you, my splendid child; aye, and a pearl each for your pretty ears—I can’t see ’em under your hat, but I dare swear they’re pretty like the rest—and maybe a diamond brooch for your kerchief. And you shall have a house of your own and a pair of fine London maids to wait on you, and I’ll take you about, my dear, and you will have naught to do in the world but enjoy yourself.”
She listened in dead silence till he had finished, and then without condescending to reply to him, turned her head over her shoulder, and hailed the groom.
“Job Stallion, Job Stallion,” she said, “your father was reared on my father’s land. Will you see a Kentish girl carried away to perdition against her will, and not lift a finger to save her?”
“Job Stallion,” said Sir Jasper, snatching a pistol from the seat beside him, “if you unfold your arms you’re a dead man.”