"Find out as best you can. Perhaps I might suggest to you the possibility of having already made friends among the members of the Order."
"Order! Who the d——l told you there was an Order?"
"Well, find out."
"I will, then!"
"And you will not!"
"Then there's treason in the League, and I'll ferret it out."
"Do so, by all means!"
She was gaining the victory again, and he changed his tactics.
"I care but little who you may have in league with you, so long as you are here in my power. No one can enter this room without my consent, and in it I am safe even from the attack of an army without. Here you are my prisoner; you think you are safe in the other apartment with the door locked and bolted on the inside, but you are not. There is a secret passage to the room, of which you are in total ignorance. I can avail myself of it at any moment: and you will some time be compelled to sleep. Don't you see I have you, now?"
This was sheer folly; for it was evidently his best policy to have kept the knowledge of the secret passage to himself if he expected to avail himself of it; but he was for inflicting all the pain he could, and this he fancied would be a deep thrust.