“I was not frightened; I was only startled,” I said.
“Come, we must go back to the house at once; I am answerable for you,” he said in an authoritative way.
“Answerable? May I ask to whom?” I said, as coldly as I could, though I began to feel a strange joy—yes, joy just after my despair, therefore all the keener by contrast. Oh, my father, what a paltry nature is mine to love another when I have but just lost you! “There is no one that has any power over me, no one who can or will ask or care what has become of me,” I said, as he did not speak for some moments.
“There is,” he said.
“That is absurd; there is not,” I asseverated.
“There is,” he said,—“Almighty God!”
He drew my hand through his arm, and we walked silently towards the house. I was wondering why I had shuddered at his sudden mention of the Deity; I was frightened to realise that his influence had even greater power over me than I thought.
“You are my sacred charge,” he said, in the same serious voice. What a voice he has—so deep, yet so mellow! “Do what you may, I shall watch over you till I die.”
“If you can find me,” I cried; for the battle to resist him against a strong inclination I felt to tell him I was his slave, to do as he pleased with, was exciting me to wildness. “Perhaps I shall die or disappear!”
“If I thought one thing, I should be the one to disappear; at least, you should never be troubled with the sight of me again,” he said, stopping when we came to an open place in the road, dropping my hand, and turning so that he could see my face plainly in the moonlight. “And I must really now, once for all, ask you to answer me a plain question, with truth, absolute truth. It is my duty to ask, and your duty to reply.”