She turned on her brother quickly: “Please say no more about the matter, Billy,” she said. “We will start at once.”
“You won’t start if it means certainly freezing to death,” he remonstrated.
She flashed a glance at Geoffrey, who had also risen and was trying to compel the truth from McVay by a stern, steady glance.
“I would,” she answered and shut the door behind her.
McVay sprang up and was about to follow her when Geoffrey stopped him. “One moment,” he said, “you are quite right. It is too late to start to-night. We must stay here until to-morrow. But if we are to spend a night here without your sister’s being told—”
“My dear Holland, think of her position, if we did tell her!”
“I grant that the information had better be withheld until just as we are starting, but in that case I must—”
“I know what you are going to ask,—my word of honour not to escape. I give it, I give it willingly.”
“I’m not going to ask for anything at all,” said Geoffrey. “I’m going to tell you one or two things, and I advise you to pay attention. We won’t have any nonsense at all. Remember I am armed, and I am a quick man with a gun. There may be some quicker, but not in the East, and it wasn’t in the East I got my training. You will always keep in front of me where I can see you plainly, and you will never, under any circumstances come nearer than six feet to me. If you should ever come nearer than that or take a sudden step in my direction, I’d shoot you just as sure as I stand here.”
McVay looked distinctly crestfallen. “Oh, come, Holland,” he said, “isn’t that the least little bit exaggerated? You would not shoot me before my own sister?”